Meta's court losses could be just the beginning

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27:33All right, we're back. So the big news of the week, and Mila, you have been kind of hammering for months about how big this news was going to be, is these two trials, both against Meta and in many ways about the concept of social media in general, that both came to a head this week. One in New Mexico, one in California. They're different in their actual substance. But in a very real way, this is sort of a referendum moment on not just is social media bad, but how do we litigate the ways in which it is bad? I feel like we should start with this trial in L.A., right? This feels like this feels like the more important one.

28:18Would you agree? We should start with the one in L.A. just because that ruling is against YouTube and Meta, particularly Instagram, although most of its other products as well. And the one in New Mexico is very specifically about Meta. They have different theories and it's important. So they're both important in that the floodgates to sue these companies for making bad products that hurt people are now wide open. And that's why everyone keeps calling them bellwether cases. You see that word in every single news report, including ours. These are bellwether cases. And what that means is a bunch of state attorneys general, a bunch of consumer advocacy groups, a bunch of parents got together and said, what are the cases we can bring against these companies that have the best facts, the most sympathetic plaintiffs, the people got hurt the most, and test this theory of the law?

29:05And if we can win, then we can bring a whole bunch of other cases. That's why they're called bellwether cases. So these are trial balloons. the one in california again the the facts are bad uh the the young woman she's 20 now she goes by kgm just her initials to protect her identity uh the facts are she started using youtube at age six she started using instagram at age nine she blames these platforms on all kinds of mental health issues including body dysmorphia she was asked specifically about them it was really hard for instagram and youtube to put her on the stand and cross-examine her they're like your your mental health issues are your issues.

29:40This was like never going to go well, right? Like they were always going to lose these cases. You put Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Aseri and Neil Mohan, the CEO of YouTube on the stand and you're like, do your products hurt people? And they're like, no. And then you show them all of these documents where they study teen usage, where they know that there's harm, where they compare their products to cigarettes. And then you have a jury full of regular people. And it's like, how do you feel about Instagram? Do you think, do you think it's good? Do you think it hurt these people or didn't? And there is not a jury in the world that was not going to find them guilty of designing products or people.

30:16Well, it was important that it was a jury, right? Because this case just was different in so many ways from the cases that we've seen before. Again, in the particulars of the facts of the case, in the way that it was constructed in front of a jury, like you're right that Mark Zuckerberg can sit in front of Congress or a judge and say stuff and it can go a lot of ways. But we've seen Mark Zuckerberg talk. He's not going to win over a jury in this case. And there were also, Lauren Feiner did a really great job of covering this case for us. Yeah, she was in the courtroom. Yeah, she was in the courtroom a lot and she talked to, like, there were parents of kids who have died and gone through horrible things in large part and they blame social media for those things.

30:59Like, I think you're right that the social media companies were always going to lose this case. But I want to come back to the idea of this wait can i just give you one vignette from lauren's piece people should go read it lauren has a piece about the parents reacting to zuckerberg it's brutal like truly brutal it's just a heartbreaking piece to read because it's a bunch of parents who've lost their children to various harms on social media platform and there's one parent in that piece who's quoted saying i saw mark zuckerberg's curly hair my son had curly hair before he killed himself it was beautiful.

31:33Mark Zuckerberg doesn't deserve to have his hair. Like that is just a fully like devastating emotional reaction from a parent to seeing the person who they blame for the death of their child. And like, you know, I think, you know, Metta had to make the arguments that it wasn't them. Like they didn't reach into an individual and do these things. But these cases were about, are the products designed to be addictive, to foster these behaviors? Do you know that you're doing it? Right. Are you aware that you're causing these harms? And I just don't think there was ever going to be a jury that would look at the evidence presented in these cases and say anything and think about their own experiences with these products and find anything other than, yes, you knew it and you did it anyway.

32:18So you've mentioned the product design piece of this, and I want you to put on your lawyer hat for me for a minute here, because we talk about Section 230 on this show a lot. And one of the things that came up over and over in all of the discussion about this is like these companies get out of these trials because they're like, well, we're so sorry for this bad thing that happened to you because of Section 230. 30 were actually not responsible for the content posted on our platforms. Right. And a lot of the stories in Lauren's story from, from the parents and a lot of the things that come up are like my kid tried to emulate a video that they watched on YouTube and, and harmed themselves or died.

32:56And those stories are awful. And that's very different from the way that this became litigated. Like these trials, as far as I understand, and this one in LA in particular went way out of its way to not be about content on the platforms. Yep. Can you explain sort of the legal avenue they went down with these and why it seemed to get away from the Section 230 fight? They needed to get away from the Section 230 fight. And I think there's a lot of consternation about whether Section 230 survives trials like this, survives this attack. By the way, there are bills in Congress right now that would just straight up repeal Section 230.

33:30The idea that we need to regulate the social media companies is bipartisan. It is enormously popular with the American people. And it just keeps running into both Section 230 and, I think very importantly, the First Amendment. So you just have that problem. And I'm calling it a problem because everyone agrees that there should be some control over what social media companies are able to do. And, you know, I think government's future regulations are bad. You've heard me say it on the show a million times. you just run into, well, the First Amendment pretty much prevents you from telling them what they have to moderate.

34:06Yeah. I can say mean things about you on the internet. They can say mean things because of the First Amendment. And then 230 says Facebook is not responsible for the content of what users post on Facebook. So if you go on Facebook and you're like, I hate my neighbor, they've done something that they think is defamatory, and then Facebook spreads it to 10 million people, the neighbor can sue you, but they can't sue Facebook, even though Facebook is the one that amplified and distributed the message. So this is a real tension. And it connects to the First Amendment very directly, right? If you change Section 230, well, the government is going to make Facebook liable for a lot of speech it wasn't liable for before.

34:44That's going to change how Facebook moderates. It's going to change how Facebook operates. There are some First Amendment concerns tied up in that. I think these cases are different. And a lot of people disagree with me. You know, Addie Roberts and our policy editor and I are just like having like a daily crash out about our feelings about tech policy and tech regulation because it feels like we've come to a point where everyone understands that the platform internet designed for virality and likes and reach and engagement has done some bad things. And there isn't some market force to fix it. You can't start a new social network and be like, it's just like Instagram, but it's not as engaging.

35:27Like, it's not going to work for you. Like, we've seen these attempts. Like, the market isn't correcting the harm. So you've got to do something else. It is unclear what that something else is. And I think these cases are, well, we're not going to talk about the content on the platform. We're not going to run headfirst into the First Amendment in Section 230. We're going to say when you design the ranking algorithm for the Instagram feed and you put stuff that is more negative at the top or you feed engagement by pushing notifications over and over again to young people in particular, you know what you're doing.

36:04Those are choices you are making that you should be liable for. A really bad analogy. You can argue with this analogy a million different ways. is if I shipped you a print magazine and like the edges of the paper constantly gave you paper cuts, you would not be like suing me over the speech in the magazine. You'd be like, this product hurts me. Right? And it's like kind of that dynamic in these cases. Now, I think a lot of people, Mike Masnick was just on Decoder. I think Mike Masnick is really smart. He's a great tech policy reporter. He runs TechDirt. He is like, this is a disaster for 230 in the First Amendment.

36:42Right? People are having different reactions to these cases. My view is if you don't put some control, if you don't find some way to make these companies liable for the harm that most people feel that they have caused, then they're just going to keep getting away with it. And I think saying your products cause harm versus the content that other people distribute cause harm at least lets you get to is your algorithm any good? Can you push these many notifications to young people? Do your teen controls actually work? Do your parental controls actually work? I think there's some back and forth in there, but man, I, again, it, the idea that you can go to court and say, we're not liable for our product design because it contains the speech of other people.

37:33It just, to me, it has never passed the smell test. And I think we're going to see a lot of these cases come up and these companies are going to they're going to back into a posture where they have to fix the products and not necessarily the moderation. Yeah, I'm not sure that's going to play out, but that feels like the future of these platforms. Yeah, it's it was really fascinating. I went back and was reading a bunch about this case from 2021 Lemon versus Snap, which I either missed entirely at the time or had just kind of memory hold like it was 2021. There's a lot going on in 2021. But that to me is is such a fascinating and sort of clean example here where basically like Lemon versus Snap was a kid was driving and there was a filter on Snapchat that would show how fast you were going.

38:21and there was a belief that if you could take a picture while the filter showed you going over 100 miles an hour you would get some kind of achievement inside of snapchat uh they they did it i believe it was 113 was what it showed on the filter when they took the picture and then they they crashed and and died um and initially this case gets thrown out on on section 230 grounds of like well this is just content on our platform you can't hold snap responsible for it and then it turns around and an appeals court says actually no you you can be tried for this because this is not like you said this is not about the content on the platform this is about the the structural design of the platform that incentivizes this kind of behavior and actually snap can be held liable for that and as far as i understand that that was the sort of crack in the door that a lot of people in cases like this saw as like oh this is this is now this is a road we can go down and a case we can win.

39:16And like the, the lines here are so unclear to me, which is what's really challenging, right? Where like, we've spent a lot of time talking about our algorithm speech. And I, I don't have a clean answer to that in my head, honestly. Like is the, is the order in which you present a bunch of things to me protected free speech or not? And should it be messy so far, pretty protected so far keeps getting thrown out on two 30 grounds. Um, seems messy, but like in this case it's worth mentioning that the plaintiff here kgm didn't just sue meta she sued meta and youtube and tiktok and snap um and settled ahead of the trial with snap and tiktok but this is not this is not a particular fight with a particular mechanism of instagram this is this is at pointed at the entirety of the way that social media works which i think is really fascinating and like youtube had a very funny statement at the end of this which is uh this is from jose castanada from Google who said, this case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.

40:19Wrong. Flatly incorrect. It's just not true. Like nothing about YouTube is not social media. But there is this thing. Can I stick on that for one second? Sure. That is the nothing is anything argument of market definition that all of these companies fall back into. You want to sue Meta for monopolizing social media. Like what is social media? Sure. Is Facebook social media? What is the market for Instagram? Is it videos of dancing people? Or is it how-to videos for small business owners? Nothing exists. And so, I mean, like, they do this all the time. And so, you know, Google's saying YouTube is a streaming platform, not a social media site.

41:00It's like, is there even a difference? This is what everyone's watching. Is TikTok a streaming platform and not a social media site? Like, is Instagram? Like you can't just fall back on nothing is anything all the time. Right. Well, and simultaneously nothing is anything and everything is everything. Yeah. Like you can't, it just doesn't, none of that works. I think they all thought they were going to win because they win so much. And I, these, I, again, I think the tech industry really misunderstands how much people dislike them. So, okay, so this is actually the thing I want to talk most about here is I think you can argue the facts of the case however you want, right?

41:39The idea of is this an assault on free speech or is this a useful different way of talking about what these platforms are, I think is a good and valuable discussion, right? Like, is your notification system different from my free speech? I would say I tend to be on your side of that, that that does not, that passes a smell test for me of like the way that you make autoplay happen is different from the content of the video that I'm watching. And it was really interesting that there was a moment where the jury in this L.A. trial was instructed not to think about the content of videos like it was it was it was made very clear that this is not about the stuff that this person is watching, which is just fascinating in a case like this that is fundamentally about like what she watched and experienced on social media.

42:25but it is like it is so clear to the point of like this is about the way the thing works not about what is on the thing but then it is just true that everybody hates social media like and so part of me wonders like i it goes back to the fact that this is a jury trial it goes back to the fact that there are like dozens or hundreds of these waiting in the wings there's going to be more of them tried this year like did these tech companies just completely miss the fact that everyone turned on them? Yes. That's nuts. I mean, look, there's like two ways you can express your opinions in America. You can vote with your dollars and you can vote with your votes.

43:03Voting with your votes, shaky track record, especially in terms of regulating tech companies. Like, we're not good at. There's no privacy law in America. That is just a straight-up disaster. Everyone thinks we should have one. The tech companies have lobbied their way out of it over and over and over again. App Store regulation. Like, the states are like, we should do App Store regulation. We should get rid of these Apple taxes and Apple shows up with like$10 billion and an army of lawyers and they go away. Like voting with your votes is just not a thing we're doing well when it comes to regulating tech companies.

43:33Okay, we should vote with your dollars. I actually think that would be the preferred outcome, right? Like you compete in the market and people choose the one that makes them feel good. These companies are all so big and they all own – they don't really compete head to head, right? There's not a competitor to YouTube that's run by Apple, right? Apple actually tried to build an AI product and they just ended up using Google's model. Yeah. Right? Like there's something about this where they've all retreated to their boxes and they have little like skirmishes, but they don't actually compete, which is why I find the nothing is anything argument always so hollow.

44:06It's like, if you're like, if you go to a normal person, is YouTube different than Instagram? They're like, yes, it is. And then the lawyers get in the way and they define everything down to nothing is anything. And now no one competes with anybody. But they're not actually competitive. And so the idea that people dislike them is not showing up in any numbers. No one's switching away. No one's stopping to use Instagram because they're mad at Mark Zuckerberg. They just keep using it because it is a monopoly in its way. Last week we talked about how there's not a great consumer AI product. And, I mean, you probably heard it as much as I did.

44:40But ChatGBT is the most popular consumer product in history. You know what it was before that? It was the Xbox Connect. Like, whatever. Sure. People have feelings about the product. Right? AI use is off the charts. It's because it's everywhere in front of everybody all the time. It doesn't mean what you think it means because there's no market competition where people are like, I'm done with this one. I'm going to buy another one now. Car makers know about market competition, right? You're like, your car is old and you're going to go buy a new car and maybe you'll stick with a brand you have, or maybe you'll buy a different car.

45:12And the products are replaceable in that way. It's just not true for these companies. And so I think they look at their data and they're like, Gemini usage in search is off the charts. People must love it. And you're like, do they? Instagram looks at usage and they're like, man, there's more video being uploaded to Instagram reels every day. People must love it. And it's like, do they? And I think they've missed it. I think they have missed that real people are having real experiences on their platforms. And when you hurt a bunch of kids, the parents are going to get mad. And if you hurt enough kids, even if it is statistically not a huge number, you're still going to get a bunch of mad parents who've had similar experiences saying, why aren't you responsible?

45:53And they will find a way. You know, the first case you're talking about that tried this theory was like 2016, 2017. It was Herrick versus Grindr. Oh, yeah. Where a young man sued Grindr because his ex-boyfriend had made like 1 ,100 fake profiles and relentlessly harassed him. And the courts found that 230 protected Grindr because it was the speech that was a problem, not the product design. That was shot one, right? We've, they've just, people have just been trying this theory out and finding the edges and the boundaries of, okay, you're not responsible for the content. We'll give you that you're not responsible for the content.

46:28You are making the systems that enable the content to hurt people. You should be responsible for that. And again, you get a bunch of parents. They're, they're going to be relentless with this idea. Like it, I mean, you and I are both parents. Like they won't stop. Even, and we hear this from these companies, over and over again if the harm is statistically small. Right? You have 5 billion users. Like, we only hurt 2 % of people. That's a lot of people. And they will be relentless. And I do think these companies have missed it in their own data, that a lot of people are actually unhappy with the experiences they're having because there's no competition, so you can't switch.

47:06So, again, I just come back to you. You can vote with your vote. You can vote with your dollars. Maybe you can vote with your attention. And if none of those systems work, you end up in court, and you end up with some outcomes that, again, I think that the 230 repercussions of free speech repercussions will be big, right? These companies will start to moderate and build their systems in different ways. But what other choice do we have? Because I think nothing, I think status quo is not acceptable. Right, so this is where I wanna poke the middle ground for you between government free speech regulation is bad and these platforms need to be reined in, right?

47:42Because this is the thing. And I think the challenge we have gone through for a long time is that the only way to pick this fight has run directly into free speech. And so it is very hard to A, litigate and B, morally defend. but I do think like to your point one of the things that has changed is that people are more and more aware of a the bad time they're having on social media platforms and be the lack of recourse they have both to sue the companies about it but also like leave right both for sort of addictive property reasons and also for where else are you gonna go reasons right like network lock-in is a huge important thing that like it's where people are it becomes very hard to leave even if you desperately want to and so all of this stuff is just like we're at a point now where i think one way to look at these things is to say okay this is going to give us an avenue to regulate notifications which which is like one possible outcome of it is like we're going to get to have a whole conversation about no i actually disagree i think right like the outcome of a court case in which you lose some money.

48:51And right now they haven't lost that much money. $6 million. Yeah. Well, it's$375 million for Meta in New Mexico. It's$3 million in total compensatory damages of which Meta has to pay 70 % and Google has to pay the rest in California. It's$8. Like it's$8. There's going to be a punitive award in California. We don't know how much that's going to be, but then there'll be more cases and that will add up. But even the juries in these cases are saying that the punitive damages are not the point. The point is the precedent. Like everyone is crystal clear on the thing they're trying to do. They're opening the floodgates to more litigation.

49:23Yeah. So that's not actually regulatory, right? They're not saying here's how you should design these systems. What they're saying is your approach to handling your own information. You did your own studies on how this stuff was affecting teenagers and you made these decisions anyway. You are negligent. That's bad. Yeah. There were all these things that came up in trial about the sort of parallel paths of meta studying the negative effects that its platforms had on people and also identifying teenagers as the main source of growth for its platforms like that stuff became very damning very quickly of like oh this is bad for teens and then there was an email that i think was like growth colon teens what you're gonna see is these companies are ideally gonna make different decisions which is just different than a regulatory approach sure right europe is like here's what the buttons should look like.

50:13Have you seen a cookie banner? It should say these words on it. Like there's one whole approach that's happening in other countries. The United States is different and for a lot of reasons we're different. And so we're saying you made bad decisions or punished. Hopefully that leads you to make different decisions. The thing Meta and Google could do is say we're actually never going to make different decisions. We'll just keep eating the losses in court. If it costs me$3 million every time a kid gets hurt, that is an acceptable outcome. That seems like not what they should do. That seems morally abhorrent.

50:44But that's what I mean. Like, it's not regulatory in that way. That's a thing you just pay the fine every time. I don't think they're going to do that. I think actually what they're going to do is appeal. By the way, the Metis statement is very good because, as you pointed out, they sued all the companies. So Metis says, we respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal. Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app. And it's like, yeah, they didn't. Yes, it's all of them. Yeah. I know what you're saying. Yeah. And also we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.

51:19And it's like, your record's bad. And in fact, there was evidence that came out in this case that Meta in particular has done less work to track that evidence because it knew what was going to come up. Like, do you remember all those years ago when Mark Zuckerberg said something to the effect of like the only reason you're mad at us is because we're the ones who do the research on what's actually going on all this other bad stuff is happening elsewhere uh and and they just don't know because they choose not to they just turn a blind eye to it um the the lesson meta learned from that was to turn its own blind eye apparently right so again what are what are some actual regulations that don't run into free speech that might help a privacy law but straightforwardly here's how these companies can use our data to operate their services that would be good Algorithmic transparency laws, where they have to publish how their algorithms work.

52:08Laws making sure that they do the research and they publish the results of that research so there's not a negative incentive for the research to exist. Right? And none of this infringes on the free speech of these platforms. It just says you have to make the information and share it with us and then protect our information as you run your services. We are just not going to get there. Those are not proposals. like algorithmic transparency proposals come up every year. There are bills in Congress right now. What are we doing? We're not funding the airports. It's like there's just a roadblock to the voting with your dollars world that is causing everybody to try to find other avenues.

52:46And so courts are the last avenue. And here we are. And I really do think these companies, I think they thought they were going to win. They have a record of winning. And I think they did not understand how much public opinion has shifted against tech companies, particularly social media platforms. We'll see. They're going to appeal. Anything can happen. The appeals process is very different. But, you know, the judges are on social media, too. They also have feelings about all of this. So we'll see. Yeah, it is fascinating. Like, you know, they always talk about jury selection and they're trying to find people who are not biased against the defendant.

53:21It's like, boy, I don't know if you can find 12 people who are going to be unbiased against how bad social media has become. Just a fascinating state of affairs. Look, I, you know, I'll flip this around. I have very complicated feelings right now about the state of tech regulation. I have very complicated feelings about Brendan Carr in the state of speech regulation in America. I think government speech regulations are bad. Just flatly, I think they're bad. These companies have used the First Amendment as a shield against accountability for every single decision they have ever made. And at some point, it just enters a ludicrous zone where everything is speech.

54:00Like anything that happens on a computer is speech and no one can ever be accountable for it. And there has to be some recalibration of that so that we're protecting things that are actual speech and making people accountable for the product decisions they make that affect people's lives. And it's somewhere in there is the right answer. I don't know what it is. I think these cases are going to make a lot of people recalibrate that answer. But I do think everything that happens on a computer is speech. has just led us to these outcomes where these companies are more powerful than ever, they control more speech than ever without any market forces to shape them up.

54:38And then there's only going to be one other outcome. And that outcome is the government does stuff. And I think that is the worst possible outcome. So hopefully what you get out of this is a bunch of companies reacting to their own research, making different decisions and actually competing to keep people safe. Yeah. All right. Well, there's more of these cases to come this year. Like you said, we're going to get appeals. it feels like this floodgate is now open. And what it leads to, I think, kind of remains anybody's guess. So we'll see, but we'll stay on it. We should take a break, and then we're going to come back and talk about some stupid speech regulation.

55:10We'll be right back.

55:12Nilay Patel:In life, growth doesn't happen alone. Family keeps you secure. Coaches maximize your performance. But in business, who is there to help you grow? when Lumen Field wants to power game day experiences for 69 ,000 fans who make sure every snap and tap leave the home crowd cheering? Lumen. That's who. Helping leaders like you grow without throwing pains. Welcome to the trusted network for AI. Learn more at Lumen.com. K-pop Demon Hunters, Haja Boys Breakfast Meal, and Huntrix Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle.

55:53Nilay Patel:So glad the Saja boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day. It is an honor to share. No, it's our honor. It is our larger honor. No, really. Stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side. And participate in McDonald's while supplies last. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs.

56:32Nilay Patel:So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

56:43All right, we're back. It's time for the lightning round. Unsponsored. for flavor. Long, long ellipsis there. Can I hype up some sponsorship ideas that are coming? Please. That's it. That's my whole...

57:01Love it. We're sponsored by our upcoming sponsorship idea. We got to compete with Influencer World and we're not going to do it. We got to figure some stuff out. I'm just saying. I love it. Get ready. It's going to get weird here on the Vergecast. I'm very excited about it. I don't even have to ask. I've been following the news. I know. It is time once again for America's Favorite Podcast Within a Podcast with some new competition that I'm not even ready to talk about. America's Favorite Podcast Within a Podcast, Brendan Carr's Dummy, this week with theme music by Chris Swick.

57:51I get real like, what if there was a Nick Jr. show called Brandon Carr is a Dummy vibes? I got postal service. I can see that. Sure. A lot. I feel like we have a lot of fans who grew up in the same era of music as we did. Yeah, I believe that's right. We're getting a lot of early 2000s indie on Brandon Carr is a Dummy. It's good. Indeed. I appreciate it. That was very good. All right, we're back. Neil, what did you do this week? Well, first of all, you mentioned the other show. So it turns out our friend Kara Swisher has been calling Brendan Carr a moron on her shows every single week. We have not communicated about this.

58:23She's doing it. So she said she's going to do an episode of On with Kara Swisher called Brendan Carr is a Moron, which is very funny. Independent thought, you know, convergent evolution. Yeah, it's really it's like when everybody invented the light bulb all at the same time. It's like we all just figured out Brendan Carr right at the same time. So I texted Kara and I was like, you should just call it Brendan Carr is a dummy. so that our podcast within a podcast can infiltrate another podcast. She thought it was funny. You can post it on our threads by the way. Say, hey, Kara. Just remind her at Kara Swisher Rent-A-Car is a dummy.

58:54We should do it. She will think that's funny as well. So we've texted. I think I'm going to go on her show. Nice. To do Rent-A-Car is a dummy with her. Perfect. We just have to schedule it. But we were texting right yesterday because it was very funny that she arrived at this conclusion. And she actually said to me, do you think you have a monopoly on calling him dumb? And I was like, no, not at all. please by all needs brendan cars stupidity contains multitudes i was like if you just don't do moron do dummy like please have it licensing fees and zero like take them and yeah uh two things this week by our boy brendan there's one everyone's paying attention to and then there's the one that's just it's just brendan being stupid in his particular way uh so i'll start with that one very quickly and then we should talk about router bands so there's two big broadcast companies that are emerging, Tegna and Nexstar, you have never heard of these companies, but they basically own all the local broadcast stations in America.

59:43They're theoretically competitors. There's a law in America that says you can't own more than 39 % of the broadcast stations in a specific area. So if you're, you know, wherever you're sitting, the broadcast stations, the TV stations around you, no one person or company can own more than 39 % of them. And it's not like goes back and forth. The number has gone up and down over time. And the idea is that there should be competition in the market for news and entertainment. And if one person owns all of the media you consume, that would be bad. I don't even think this is like controversial, right?

1:00:17Having a monopoly on everything people consume gives you a lot of power. The government would like to preserve some sense of competition instead of doing speech regulations. Okay, 39 % is a cap. The problem is that the big companies like merging and Brendan is nothing but a stooge for big companies. So he just went ahead and waived the cap. He said, Nextar Tegna merger, I've waived the cap. And even though that the combined company will cover at least 60 % of U.S. households, that's fine. And here's his quote. Waiving the rule here is consistent with longstanding FCC authorities and doing so promotes the underlying purpose of the FCC's media regulation by promoting competition, localists and universities.

1:00:55What? This is just backwards. So Brendan, Mr. I must follow the rules about news distortion when it comes to regulating comedians, has said, well, these big companies want to merge. They're pretty Trump-friendly companies. They just are. They want to merge. They're being very friendly to Trump in particular right now. I've gone ahead and waived the 39 % rule. To promote competition. To promote competition. Sure. Because he says they need to be so big to compete with Facebook. Oh, right. Because fundamentally, he's really mad at Disney. Right. Whatever it is. And that Disney produces half of the content that people want, which is just like.

1:01:29And it's all relentlessly woke or whatever. No, it makes any sense. It's like Brendan words. Anyway, so in Brendan world, this idea that he has to exhume these ancient statutes that allow him to regulate comedians and he must enforce the laws that's written. While also waiving the rules so he can pass through a merger. Like perfect Brendan Carr has done it. And in another world, I would have spent all of our time on this. But that is not this world. It is an imperfect world. and Brendan said something much stupider this week. This one's my favorite because this isn't stupid in the normal definition of stupid, which is that it's wrong and bad.

1:02:07This is straightforwardly a thing a stupid person does. Do you know what I mean? Just out of the blue. It's not a thing I disagree with. It's just a thing that is stupid. So this week, the FCC issued a national security determination that says allowing routers like Wi-Fi routers to be produced abroad and dominate the U.S. market creates unacceptable economic, national security and cybersecurity risks. And that means no new routers produced abroad will be allowed in the American market unless those companies pass a certification. This is a huge surprise to the industry. Sean Allister and I spent the week calling router executives.

1:02:47This is not a thing we normally spend our time doing. And asking questions like, did you know this was going to happen? What happens now? And the answers were no, no, and we're going to say anything on the record because we're afraid of the Trump administration. So this is not a normal regulatory moment. Like, you know, I'll just compare it to Biden. The Biden administration would do anything. And like 50 executives would line up to go on CNBC to be like, this is an infringement on the American way. The Trump administration capriciously bans all routers for nonspecific reasons in ways that will not actually keep anyone safe.

1:03:18And everyone is literally too stared to even issue like a press statement to us that says something anodyne, like we are evaluating the thing and blah. Like I was like, just give me that statement. So it's clear that you're evaluating the ruling and everyone's too afraid to even issue that statement. Yeah, the only statements we were able to get are from companies that are like, oh, we applaud the push for more security. It's like, cool, thanks guys. And again, I would just compare this to, like Biden would be like, Like, man, I wish my TV was brighter. And like 50 TV manufacturers would show up on television to be like, how dare he?

1:03:52Yeah. Do you believe in liberty? Like, this is not that. This is we are deathly afraid of the government and we're not saying a word about it. Which is, to be clear, the point. That is the desired outcome of the Trump administration doing this stuff this way. Yeah. So here's the upshot of this. All the routers that are currently on sale remain on sale. It's only new routers that don't have existing FCC clearance. Right. So if you're worried about the security of Americans' networks... You would not say all routers that are currently on sale remain on sale. And they don't have to be updated. You don't have to do anything to them.

1:04:31The routers you have don't have to be updated. Nope. So we haven't accomplished any goals. Straightforwardly, we're just saying you have to make routers in the future in the United States of America. But all the routers that are currently being made overseas that have existing FCC certification are fine. So Netgear, TP-Link, Cisco, Euro, you name it. all their existing products are fine. Weird, right? But there's a security. It's like there's a security risk in the future that I, Brendan Carr, have discovered in the future but cannot tell you about. But won't tell you about, have not apparently told any of these companies about.

1:05:10And it only exists on routers that haven't been made yet. It only exists on routers that haven't been made yet. And it's unclear if getting the certification and still making the routers overseas is fine or if you can just bring all the stuff to the United States, including the software on the routers, and just load the software on the routers in the United States, and that would be fine, even though the software might have a supply chain attack. And, by the way, the certification is a self-certification so that the companies can just say, here's our stuff. Like, here's how we're going to make these routers.

1:05:38We promise it's fine. And the FCC might say that's okay. So even the process of how this will work is totally unclear. We've accomplished approximately nothing except maybe a bunch of router manufacturers have to make routers in the United States. That's not that. It's a bunch of router manufacturers have to dream up a bunch of fake plans to make routers in the U.S. and then tell them loudly to the Trump administration in a way that makes Donald Trump look good. That's the extent of it. You have to write down, we're going to make things in the U.S. Trump did it. Huzzah. And then everything gets to keep being normal.

1:06:19Like, that's just what this is. We think so. You know, all the attacks that they're calling out, like Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon, those attacks happen because our telecom companies, which Brendan Carr is supposed to regulate, had extremely lax security measures and basically outsourced everything they do now. And he's not regulating them. Right. In fact, he's reduced regulations on telecom companies. He has a whole initiative called Delete, Delete, Delete that he's very proud of where he lets telecom companies do whatever they want at cheaper cost. He doesn't care about lowering prices or making speeds faster or keeping us safer.

1:06:53He has just found a way to get a bunch of router manufacturers to say that they're going to build routers in the United States of America to comply with this law. What they're actually going to do is nothing and continue making the routers that are still fine overseas while they just wait it out. like it's very obvious that they're just going to wait this out in some way or they will find a way to do final assembly in the United States in a way that passes muster with these regulations and claim that as a victory it's just super unclear what any of this will actually accomplish except he got a headline saying all routers have to be made outside the United States and he definitely got a headline saying all routers are banned which was very scary and people freaked out and then you just look at it and you're like actually this directive says nothing It doesn't even present evidence for the claim that these routers are dangerous.

1:07:42Again, Sean and I are just like calling router manufacturers. A very weird afternoon where we talk to a bunch of router manufacturers. They're all deeply confused. They're all trying to engage the government on this stuff. It's not like this is a new idea. But the United States knows that there are cyber attacks on U.S. soil all the time. It knows that these networks are vulnerable. It knows, for example, that TP-Link, the biggest seller of routers in the United States, has like huge problems. TB Link was the first to issue a statement. And they're like, we're going to be great, you guys. We're going to super shape up.

1:08:12Because they have the most to lose. But the reality is that most routers in most people's homes are delivered to them by telecom companies, by your ISP. And you could just impose this regulation on the ISP and say, keep the routers safe. Do as many years of software updates as you can. You are accountable for software patches. And I would accomplish the same goal as saying we're banning all router manufacturing. and Brendan can't do that because he cannot regulate a telecom company. It's just not in his bones. He will regulate late night comedians but he cannot regulate a telecom company. He allowed telecom companies to not even have to tell you what your bill is for.

1:08:48I do think the thing that is funniest about this to me is that there is an actual sort of societal good outcome which is that it is true that your router is a potential vector for problems on your internet connection And if this leads to everyone going in and changing the admin password on their router, the world will be a very slightly better place. Do you know what I mean? Like, your admin password is probably either admin or 1234 on your router. You should change that. You just should. It's just a good idea. I should not be able to walk into your house and log into your router. And I probably could right now.

1:09:24Just fix that. It's very simple. But like, they could have just issued that as an executive order from the White House being like, change your router password. That would have been fine. But instead, it's this pure nonsense that is the same pure nonsense. Like, Sean wrote a great FAQ for the site about this and compared it to the thing where they got all worried about chips just to basically extract a portion of NVIDIA's revenues. Yep. And that's like that, that, that is the only thing this looks like to me is the same kind of come bow at the feet of the Trump administration and pay us. And we will let you continue doing business.

1:10:05It is, it's a shakedown. Like, I don't know how to look at this other than it's a shakedown. It's a shakedown that it will absolutely result in no new routers for a while. Like existing router models will just keep getting sold. which is probably fine. Like the stakes of that are very low. No one is clamoring for Wi-Fi 8. Like I think it's going to be fine for a couple years. Especially because Brendan isn't making the speeds get faster. Right. I don't know, man. Like you can't do this to phones. Like all the phones are made in China. But that's not a big enough market. And so maybe this is just like a trial balloon.

1:10:41Right. You do it with routers and you do it with laptops and finally you get to phones. And that would be an enormous regulatory overreach for the FCC. But that's Brendan. That's our boy, right? I must follow the law when it comes to regulating comedians. I cannot, I will just capriciously change the law when it comes to how many stations you can own in a broadcast market. And I've made up a law when it comes to where routers should be made as a way to baby step towards regulating phones directly. That is his end goal, is to regulate speech on the internet in whatever form he can get to. It has always been the end goal.

1:11:15It is all these things are baby steps towards it. As always, Brendan, you can, you're, you're welcome to come on the show. You can come on the show when I, when I go do Brendan Carr as a dummy on Kara's show. I think that would be fun. How dare you? Again, I, you can, you can tweet. I swear to God, Eli, if you go on Kara Swisher's show with Brendan Carr, I will, I will cut you out of the first. We can have her on our show. It's a podcast within a podcast. We have never specified what podcast it must be within. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Do you see what I mean? It's modular. Whoa. Okay. This is a powerful idea.

1:11:50Anyone can do Brennan Carr as a Dummy. It's an open source license. If you want to do Brennan Carr as a Dummy on your podcast, please. We welcome it. It's a benign virus in the podcast ecosystem. A sports podcast? You know, Mina Kimes, if you want to do Brennan Carr as a Dummy, get it out there. If I can get Pat McAfee to do Brennan Carr as a Dummy. We're federating Brendan Carr as a dummy. It's open source, baby. It's beautiful. Anyhow, Brendan, if you want to come on on Brendan Carr as a dummy, you want to talk to me on my show. Wait, if Brendan goes on Decoder, is that Brendan Carr as a dummy?

1:12:26Everything is nothing, is what I'm saying. Nothing is anything. If Brendan Carr goes on Facebook, is that Brendan Carr as a dummy? He's a dummy wherever he is. As always, Brendan, you're welcome to see if you can answer questions about any of this. it's not gone well for people lately answering questions but you can try on this show on Decoder, on any other show apparently on the street I welcome it, I would love to chat with you about what qualifications routers in the United States will have that make them safer than routers made other places if you haven't laid it out but that's been Brennan Carr's Dummy America's favorite podcast within any podcast Within all podcasts simultaneously simultaneously we are simulcasting brennan car as a dummy to every podcast you listen to we haven't figured out this technology but it's gonna happen yeah um all right my first one is an end to a lawsuit i've been tracking for the last couple of years against this guy named michael smith uh who did just the most fascinating and i think telling thing about the state of the world so michael smith is this guy from north carolina who over the course of i think seven years used AI to create hundreds of thousands of songs, uploaded those songs to Spotify, and used AI tools to automatically listen to those hundreds of thousands of songs hundreds of thousands of times a day.

1:13:51He made himself, I believe the number was like $1.2 million a year in royalties, again, over many listens and many songs. Ends up being caught for this, ends up getting sued, pled guilty this week and has agreed to pay, it was$8.09 million. So this is the end of a really fascinating road. This thing has gone for the last couple of years, but he created this kind of like, dare I say genius scheme in which he used technology to create songs that no human, as far as we know, ever listened to. It was not important that humans ever listened to them because the bots would go and listen to them. And he was just doing royalty arbitrage, basically.

1:14:38He was just extracting money from Spotify because it has automated systems to pay artists based on how things get listened to. And so he's just pulling money out of the system with this purely automated making and listening to music thing. And my thing is, I absolutely guarantee you this is happening everywhere on the internet all the time at vastly bigger scale than you can possibly imagine. Like there was this company, this was a couple of years ago now that was like starting that they like very loudly pronounced they were going to start making AI generated podcasts. And they're like, we're going to make thousands of them and they're each going to get 50 listens.

1:15:17And because there's thousands of them, we're going to make money because it costs us nothing to make them. And we can make them at such unbelievable scale that we're going to make a little bit of money every time. And that's how we make a lot of money. And that like they just above board did the same thing this dude did. Well, the fraud here was having the bots listen to the song. If you were like, I will flood Spotify with AI-generated music, and that will take listens from other people, but that's the money I made because my cost of production is—this is like the white noise on Spotify. Everybody has been buying views on social media platforms since time and memory.

1:15:50Can I tell you actually the twist on this that I love the most? Sure. So, I mean, anybody on any of the social media platforms knows that there's just clips of podcasts everywhere all the time now, right? And there are companies that will shoot a fake podcast with founders and then buy views for those clips to promote. I have the pitch in my inbox from these companies. It's like, look at this fake podcast we shot. And I'm like, I should do this. First of all, that's my reaction to this. If you're watching this as a clip, by the way, please know that is what this is. We don't make a podcast. So these companies, they basically have armies of people in discords doing clips.

1:16:28And they're doing labor arbitrage. Those people are overseas. They're paying them the rates. They're paying them based on views. And the turn is they're not using bots to get views for themselves. They send bots to the other clippers so that the systems detect those clips and downrank them for having bot views. Whoa. Very good. That is really interesting. And so like, I agree with you that it's happening at massive scale, but it's also happening in ways you would never expect. Yeah. Well, and the thing is, it is essentially because it can happen at such incredible scale. Like if I just made a video and bought it 100 million views, you would notice, right?

1:17:12Like there are obvious behavioral things that these platforms can detect and shut down. They would demonetize my video. They would delete the video, whatever. There are lots of tools that exist to prevent that behavior. they don't work all that well right like every time you look and see one of these platforms like ban a bunch of uh obvious bot accounts and you see all the celebrity accounts drop precipitously like this is just a thing that happens everybody has been buying these things for forever and in that case it's like i buy a bunch of followers so that my brand deals get more expensive which is like one bit of fakeness removed right like i'm duping you because you're stupid it's not bots the whole way down.

1:17:52My bots are just tricking you. That's slightly different. But this is all of these dots are now just connecting because you are very close to having like 10 ,000 Android phones in your basement, aren't you? Oh, my God, I could. This is the thing. When I say very close, do you have like 5 ,000 Android phones in your basement constantly scrolling your own social media feeds? Let's just say there's a reason my camera is zoomed specifically the way that it is no but but again it's like the the scale of this not in like a revenue sense but in the in the fact that so this guy creates accounts on apple music spotify and youtube music he creates thousands of accounts again all of this is happening individually at such tiny scale that like if i'm spotify i actually don't care that a few dollars are being allocated in the wrong direction right like that that's a price they're all willing to pay it goes under the detection zones.

1:18:45But he did this hundreds of thousands of times because you can completely automate the entire process. It costs him nothing to do it once versus to do it a hundred thousand times. And so now you have this problem of, okay, I'm not losing$3. I'm losing$3 hundreds of thousands of times. And that is the kind of thing that I absolutely guarantee you is happening at a scale. Absolutely. No one is willing to reckon. It's all over the place and it's going to get worse. I also point out that is the plot of the movie Office Space, but no one watches that movie for the actual plot.

1:19:16Nilay Patel:It is the plot of Office Space. That's actually a thing that's happening, like, burbling under the jokes. Like, that movie is all tone, but there's, like, a little bit of plot, and that's the plot of Office Space. That's true. But yeah, it is, like, this is, there are going to be so many lawsuits like this one to come. Kudos to Michael Smith for being an innovator. You know what I mean? what's your next one I've got another one I'm just going to plug version history so we did version history on LimeWire really fun episode we did with Sarah Jong and all these like copyright cases music piracy came up the Grokster case Sony vs Betamax there was a case this week at the Supreme Court that reheated all of it where the music label sued Cox the ISP Cox Communications for knowing that music was being pirated on their network and doing nothing about it.

1:20:11And this went all the way up to the Supreme Court. How did that go to this? Haven't we litigated this 700 ,000 different times? How did this end up at the Supreme Court? It's the same as the social media trials. Yeah, fair. You litigate and lose. You kind of carve off a different shunka and you go at it again. So the labels tried it again. And they had been winning. They had gotten through, I think it was the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Cox was held liable. They ended up at the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court reheated all of the cases that we talked about in version history on Linewire, the Grokster case, the Betamax case.

1:20:41And they found that Cox was not liable for the piracy its users were committing on its network. And it's like a really, if you read the decision, it's Clarence Thomas. And he's like, we're getting a little wild here saying everyone's liable for everything. Cox simply, this is the quote, Cox simply provided internet access, which was used for many purposes other than copyright infringement. Big one. Yeah. Anyway, the trade organization, the RIAA, is, of course, disappointed in the court's decision and said, copyright law must create creators and markets from harmful infringement. And policymakers should look closely at the impact of this ruling.

1:21:17And it's like, yeah, dude, the policymakers are also stealing TV. I don't know how to tell you this. The boomers all have the weird box that streams IPTV to them. And that's our policymakers. Like, sorry, bro. That's rough, dude. It just reminded me of that episode of Virgin History. It was really fun to make. and the issues in that continue to be relevant literally to this day at the Supreme Court. It's the kind of thing that it does feel like we are doomed to litigate forever and Sarah Jong is doomed to be angry about forever. This is just our life. Yeah, it was a fun episode. Go listen to it.

1:21:49Go watch it. My next one, I'm going to wrap a bunch of stuff just into one last lightning round item for me here. And then we're going to end with you because I'm very excited about ending on some grammarly stuff. But it was a big week in chatbots. We have OpenAI trying desperately to focus on the things that are actually working and stop doing all the weird stuff that isn't. They closed down the Sora app, for which I would say there was very little sadness and concern. the more interesting part of that is when the Sora app went away evidently so did it's Disney deal which is very interesting and I suspect I don't want to speculate on things I don't know but it seems to me that there is a turn of reporting left to do there on what was happening to that deal because we thought it was weird at the time that Disney would sign up to make this deal and invest in OpenAI and that this felt odd and it feels even stranger now the one turn of reporting we already have is that Disney was surprised Right.

1:22:48Yeah. And a lot of this is not they're not like giving up on the idea of video generation. They're just pulling all this into chat GPT. There seems to be a real sort of centralizing thing happening. We also had news last week that OpenAI is really invested in building out this like super app out of chat GPT. This is everybody's idea now. Right. Like this is this is the thing. And I think everybody sees what the cloud app has become where they put cloud code into it and then there's co-work into it. And so people are like spending time in there. now google is apparently trying to do the same thing with gemini open ai is trying to do the same thing with chat gpt um god only knows what microsoft is doing did you see the thing earlier this week where microsoft was basically just like we're so sorry we're we're gonna refocus on making windows 11 good for the first time ever our plan is to make windows 11 something that you like and not have so much co-pilot nonsense in there so there's just everyone is like flailing to figure out how to package all of this stuff in a way that people actually like.

1:23:46There was also news this week that Apple's big plan for overhauling all of its AI stuff is to have a standalone Siri app that will do a lot of this same stuff, which is like a sort of diametrically different approach than Apple has taken before. Like Apple has always talked about Siri as this sort of spread across the operating system technology that is like diffused into the phone and now re-centralizing all of it into an app called Siri would just be a very different way of thinking about what AI means. I think they have to do that because they need to be able to update that app way faster than the operating system.

1:24:18I actually think it's the right decision, to be clear. Like, the thing Claude has done, which is basically turn AI into a bundle of experiences inside of an app, is just how people use technology right now. Like, I think that just makes sense. And if you want to eventually have it be the everything, everywhere, all at once technology, fine, but we're not there yet. So I think it is probably the right approach it's it's just going to be very funny for apple in particular because siri sucks everybody thinks siri sucks and apple's gonna have to be like here's a siri app on your phone do you want this and that makes me laugh they do get to just put it on your home screen by default which they will do ruthlessly they also put a u2 album on everybody's phone by default and that went over super great with everybody like you know what i mean like it's it's not it's not gonna go over super well i don't think but anyway so this is like this is the big product innovation now.

1:25:08It's like everybody has tried to do everything. And now what we're actually going to get is a series of these like all in one apps that are trying to create this kind of sticky user behavior. Because the other thing that happens is you go to cloud code because cloud code is really good. And that makes you use cloud more, which is very useful for Anthropic. Like that is not a thing that OpenAI has done a good job of building, ironically. And it's not a thing that Google has done a very good job of building. So we're starting to see this massive consolidation back into all of these AI apps in a way that they're just going to look like apps, which is very interesting.

1:25:41I mean, I think we should say it again. This is the point you've been making. There is a great use case in the enterprise for AI. It's business software. It's the thing you keep saying. If you run a business, the AI tools can help you, particularly if your business requires software or automation. Like if you think in loops, if you have software brain, AI is great for you. And a lot of people have software brain and a lot of businesses require a lot of software. And if you can bring the cost of developing all new software to zero, maybe there will be new kinds of businesses. Software brain. Software brain is like trying to take over the world.

1:26:18Like what if everything was software brain and just running into reality? And most consumers, even the software people I know in their everyday lives do not have software brain. Like you can't. Can I read you a Slack message that you wrote? Because I've been thinking about it ever since. This is last Friday. We have a Slack room for our whole editorial team. And you just wrote, I don't know what the story would be, but I feel like we should run the people do not yearn for automation as a headline. I have thought the phrase the people do not yearn for automation 16 times a day since that. And it's true.

1:26:50Like the people do not yearn for automation. It is not, that's not what we spend most of our time thinking about as normal humans in their lives. If you describe most people's lives as a loop, they will get very mad at you. Yes. Like those, there are lots of movies about how bloodless your life is. A loop is. And trying in fact, to get out of the loop and eat, pray, love your way through or whatever. Like, I mean, you can, what's the Ryan Reynolds movie where he's an NPC? Oh, a free guy. It's like somewhere on the spectrum of like free guy to fight club is your life is not a loop. Right. And so like if you just try to apply software brain to consumer use cases, you end up demanding that everyone lives an automatable life or which is never going to work or you're going to run into the inherent brittleness of AI as it exists today.

1:27:48Yep. Right, which is, well, Allison is going to test task automation on the S26 and Gemini is going to take 13 minutes to order an Uber because it's just staring at the Uber app being like, what do I do now? And just burning tokens along the way. And so I see what's happening here is there's product market fit in the enterprise. They figured it out. Because if you describe a business as a loop, you have gone a long way towards revolutionizing any business. And you can do all kinds of business logic. If you are like, you're as a consumer, you're a loop. You're going to order the same yogurt every week.

1:28:23And that's the yogurt you're going to eat. People are like, go fuck yourself. Like, absolutely not. And like, I just don't, every technology that tries to automate the consumer experience in that way runs in the same, historically has run into the same problem. And they're all marketed the same way, right? We're going to know everything that's in your fridge so we can tell you what recipe to make. And it just simply does not work. because it turns out you don't log everything that's in your fridge. Right. So I look at all this stuff and I'm just like, man, the people do not yearn for automation.

1:28:57And these tools are just there to automate things, which is great for business and is going to just run into the brittleness of Alexa and Google Assistant and everything else that has promised to automate your entire life in very specific ways. Yep. It's good stuff. By the way, if you know what the story is, I would still love to run that headline. Yeah, this does not obviate running that headline, which is still a thing I would like to do. It's a very good headline. And then I can stop thinking about it, which will be very helpful. All right. For our last one here, it's time for you to close a loop that we've been talking about.

1:29:28You have been, we've talked a lot about what's been going on with Grammarly and it's expert voice. Was it called Expert Voices? Expert Voices. Expert Voices feature that impersonated you and me and lots of other people on the internet. You've been sort of threatening to have Shashir Mirosha, the CEO of the company, on Decoder. He came on Decoder. How'd it go? It went. It went. So I didn't know Shashir before. I think you did. I know lots of reporters who've known Shashir in a variety of roles over the years. He used to be the head of products at YouTube. So, like, you know, we talked to a lot of Google executives.

1:30:05Like, reporters talk to Googlers. Like, people knew Shashir. I will just say this. I like people who are honest. I think he's honest. He says what he's thinking. Yeah, I like Shashir. I've met him many times going all the way back to he ran a company called Coda for a long time that I really liked. Like, he is one of those people who has been doing this long enough to understand how it works. and I have always enjoyed talking to him about product stuff. Yeah, and I don't think he was like shading. I think he was telling me what he really thought. And I appreciate that and I appreciate that he came on.

1:30:36Obviously, I was like pretty mad at him because he stole my identity. I thought we sat in the pocket there for a minute. I'd actually invited him on the show because he has such an interesting background. Like he used to work for Larry Page. He used to work for Sundar. He's on the board at Spotify. I had wanted to have a big conversation about creators and the creator economy and like building these platforms. And then he did a thing that I think is coming to the entire creator economy writ large. YouTube is, you know, they reacted to the Grammarly stuff by inviting you and me into their likeness detection program.

1:31:12Yeah. Because they know they need a likeness detection program because people are going to use our likeness on YouTube left and right without permission. And they need to have some system to shut it down. I think you can clone songs and put them on Spotify today. Spotify, you don't even need AI to do it. Every night, I just yell at our smart speaker to play lullaby versions of Taylor Swift, and I don't even know where that stuff comes from. There are just 10 ,000 albums on Spotify. Are they generated by AI? I don't know. I know it makes them sleep. There's your Spotify fraud. Yep. Right? This thing is going to start happening at really high rates to lots of people.

1:31:53So he's in the middle of it. Obviously, he had pulled the feature. He said he didn't think the feature was any good. But what I took away from that conversation is no one has thought this through. And this stuff is people's livelihoods. And just saying it's attribution when there's no economic upside to that attribution, and then you can clone people left and right, man, it's going to get messy. like creators do not take kindly to losing money from their work on these platforms they they are fighting for every dollar like a small creator gets paid like three thousand dollars to do a brand deal at small scales yeah every dollar counts and so i i you know i i felt like shashir could take it like he he's been in these roles he's he you know he he's he has faced the full fury of the youtube community before in that role yeah and so there's a little bit of me saying okay I'm gonna make you answer for everything and a little bit of like, why did you ship this feature?

1:32:50But I think you could take it. I think, I don't know. I don't know how you felt about it. I was in it. I tried to be as fair as I could while, you know, still dealing with the fact that I was involved. But I felt like that conversation, both sides of that debate were present and like made with as much conviction as could be made. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, my, my read on it, um, to be, perfectly frank i think you're angry angrier about your inclusion in that feature than i was which was really interesting but uh i don't know i have i have a certain sort of nihilism about the internet now that i probably need to get over there are pictures of me wearing airpods that have been used to sell fake airpods on alibaba for 15 years i had a friend who sent me a picture of me in a slide on some like you know one of those like pop crave knockoffs about how bad they were calling them you know pervert glasses all of the the like ray-bans and there was a picture of me from the version history episode of google glass wearing google glass and sort of looking up like this and they sent it to me and they were like are you a pervert and i was like i don't think so but here we are but anyway i think the i was struck by the same thing that it sounds like you were which is that it just doesn't seem like they actually thought this all the way through like no one asked the full questions and it reminded me of something uh Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Yahoo, said to you, which is basically that he thought it was a bummer that Google was forced to react to chat GPT so fast and decided to react so fast that it didn't actually sit down and think about what it wanted to do.

1:34:24And I think that there is so much of that happening in AI right now. The money is so big. The stakes are so high. There is a sense that all of this is moving so fast that if you take two seconds to sit down and think that you will get left behind. and all of these companies are just running themselves ragged, making huge mistakes in service of trying to run as fast as they possibly can. And it's like maybe Google should have sat down and thought, oh, how do we want to actually integrate this into our products instead of just like scattershot doing everything it possibly could and hoping it would eventually catch up.

1:34:57This felt like sort of the same thing to me, where they're just like, we have an AI gun. We're going to point it at everything we can because we feel like we have to. Yeah, I mean, look, I'll connect it to the social media trials we were talking about. These companies are confusing user downloads with quality. Yeah. Over and over and over again. And so, you know, Google looked at lots and lots of people downloading ChatGPT and decided that they preferred it. And maybe they did prefer, you know, the sort of conversational output of ChatGPT to whatever junked up sponsored 10 blue link thing that Google was doing.

1:35:29And maybe they didn't interact to it. but like everybody knows the free version of chat chubb that most people are using isn't any good and will like consistently just lie to you and make things up or like be too syncopantic everybody knows it writes people are people claim that they see chat chubb writing all over the place now because they're used to it and they think it's not good google ai overviews i you know the hot theory is they switched to the cheaper gemini model to run ai overviews because obviously they need to lower costs. That thing is wrong all the time in a way that I think is hurting Google's reputation.

1:36:03But then you ask Google, they're like, it's got the most take up of all time. And they just consistently are confusing like numeric measures of success for quality measures of success. And I, I just think everybody is like, these tools can do a lot of stuff. They can get you to an outcome. You can vibe code, whatever. Is it any good? like is this good like do people actually like using the tools do the people whose names we're using actually want to be included in this way and i think that you're right the mad rush to claim success is just confusing everybody about what success actually is and it's funny to have this conversation on the cusp of apple 50 when you know videos of steve jobs like left and right being like we won't do stuff to just do it we do stuff because it's great and it's like whoa this industry has forgotten that lesson yeah yeah i i don't i don't want to dwell on this too long because people should just go listen to the episode it's it's a it's a good decoder most decoders trash but this is good uh but there's just one thing so you you had this back and forth with them where you're talking about basically uh the they went through this immediate backlash to the feature and they said uh that people could email and opt them out and and he sort of disagrees with you that what he what he ends up saying is he decided this was off strategy and shuts it down and all this happened for the lawsuit.

1:37:18But then you say, you say it's off strategy for you. The feature obviously shipped. What made it on strategy at the time he shipped? And he says this thing that I think is totally fascinating. At the time, the team believed they were doing that. This is from the transcript. They were looking at users and they were focused on a user need, which is, I wish an expert could give me feedback at this moment. I wish my salesperson could give me feedback. I wish my support person could give me feedback. I wish my idol could give me feedback. I wish this expert could give me feedback. In itself, I think that motivation that users have is a really good one.

1:37:44And I think one that I would encourage experts and creators to lean into. It's a big opportunity. Do you know what? Never what the word that never, ever, ever appears in there is AI. Like this, he, he fundamentally misunderstood a human need as an AI product. Like, and this is like, did you remember when meta launched the thing where you could chat with AI versions of celebrities? Same thing. Like I want to talk to a celebrity is not an AI feature. It isn't it. And it is actually that disconnect between you have built me an AI solution to a human problem is part of why people don't like AI. Like this idea that you can simulate human needs and human relationships and human problems and do human things by throwing AI at it with the name Nilay Patel on it is the problem.

1:38:29It's not the solution. It is the problem. If Grammarly built a thing that was like, we will connect you to Nilay Patel who will edit your story for you. I think that's fascinating. Like what a weird idea. This is the worst cameo clone of all time. What's that saying? Like, what if Cameo, but it's Neelai yelling at you that your writing is not good is like, that's a product I'm interested in. But the idea that they are looking at this and they're saying, I want more people. I want collaborative tools for humans. And they're saying, we're going to AI fake our way through this and you're going to love it is just so fundamentally disconnected from actual reality that it makes me crazy.

1:39:05David, it's software brain. It is. It is software brain. pure software brand because you know his pitch to me was log into our platform and make an ai of yourself by writing down the rules you would use to edit and i was like i don't know what those are and also why would i do that like what that's not how i edit that's not how anybody edits like apart from some very rote things like put the name of the product in the sentence about the You know, like once you're past that, there's no way to do rules-based taste. Right. But software brain with the power of AI thinks you can do rules-based taste over and over and over and over again.

1:39:49It thinks you can do rules-based taste. And you can hear the AICOs talk about it. Taste will be the big differentiator. Yeah. That was the superhuman tagline. Taste will be more valuable than ever. And it's like, yeah, man, that's squishy. It's the thing you can't replicate. And so if you think taste is more valuable than ever, you have got to find a way to actually make it economically valuable. And you cannot say it's rules-based and my taste is an app that you can download. That doesn't make any sense at all. So if you can write down what your taste is, it's not taste. I sat there with some, you know, a bunch of writer friends all listen to that interview.

1:40:27And we sat there trying to think of rules about how we edit. and it's like you can't and these are fancy writer people you just can't do it you've got ways you got little tricks that you use when i was a 12 post and gadget blogger i had a keyboard expansion macro for netbook specs i wrote those netbook specs like 500 times a day does that count like absolutely doesn't count yeah um anyway i just i i keep coming back to software brain the people do not yearn for automation, David. Yep. All right, we should get out of here. You've now said it twice, which means I could use this headline as the title for this episode, but we're not going to.

1:41:06We should get out of here. Real quick, before you have to go get your flight, plug Decoder, what's coming? Decoder next week is the CEO of Okta, Todd McKinnon. And the week after that is the CEO of Cisco, Chuck Robbins. These will be fun ones. I like it. Version history this weekend, the 1984 Macintosh with John Gruber. We had a blast making that thing. We had an original Macintosh on the table with us in the studio. It's a very good time. It's a really fun episode. Apple 50 stuff coming all week. As you're hearing this, the Ranker will be live. So go rank stuff. Send us your rankings. Yell at us about all the things that aren't in there.

1:41:42Send us emails, vergecastatheverge.com, about all this and everything else. Call the hotline 866-VERGE-11. Thank you, as always, for watching and listening. The Verge Cast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. Nilay, go catch your flight. Take us out. Rock and roll.