Montana bans TikTok. Also, FREE TV

24:22So you got six months or so, a little over six months. What happened? I mean, there's immediately lawsuits, right? I'm actually wondering about that because there is one other possibility in, well, there are two other cases in which this law never comes into effect and we never see it. The first is that Congress passes a law that's nationwide that bans TikTok and does something similar. Something like the Restrict Act. Yes. So if Congress passes the Restrict Act, then they're just like, yeah, never mind. We're TikTok's banned. We don't care. We don't care about our state's law. And so then they never have to deal with it.

24:54And then the other option is that if TikTok gets sold to a company or spun off somewhere that is not run by or in China, then this law also goes off the books. And so I think those are two possibilities. And I'm wondering if those possibilities are going to be strong enough that people decide they don't want to sue. That seems like maybe an option, but I think that would be a pretty big bet. And so, yeah, there are almost certainly going to be lawsuits. The people I would lean on, I would expect it's possible TikTok would file one. It's also very plausible that a group of users would do that. That is actually how the WeChat lawsuit went to court after Trump tried to ban it, was that all of these users got together and said, this is infringing on our free speech rights.

25:38And so then a judge actually provisionally sort of agreed with them. And so it's possible we'll see, I don't know, the ACLU file a suit that says. They're going to collect a bunch of TikTokers. Yeah, it collects TikTok users and says this is infringing on our rights. NetChoice is the other organization. It's a trade group that ends up filing a lot of lawsuits against state cases, state laws. And so it's possible they will also do something. I just can't imagine why they wouldn't. Because on the one hand, I mean, it really seems to me like every single action happening right now is designed to force a sale.

26:11Because there's just either a bunch of technology exists to geofence the app store in a way that I don't understand. Or what Montana is proposing is to essentially punish Apple for TikTok existing. which seems like a mess because what you're saying is like if you're going to have tiktok in your app store or let people who have iphones or in google's case android phones use tiktok we're going to penalize you that's a real weird move especially when google and apple have like pretty big levers they can pull to make users in montana very mad at the government who's doing this so i just if you play this all the way out it doesn't make sense to me how this works and there's been no real communication from the state of montana how any of this is going to work so i have to imagine everybody is just the governor's brother has a company called big buck right he's just hoping that is like fine we're merging with big buck yeah and now now the governor owns tiktok basically yeah they're like it's it's a big you know political win in a moment where everyone is worried about china and there's a lot of feelings about tiktok and everybody likes to talk about you know half of american supportive and on tiktok and you just get to keep trying to push this thing down the road of let's sell TikTok and then everybody who is part of this gets to take yet another victory lap.

27:25But in the meantime, like that's a big thing to do. It's going to take a long time to do. January 2024 is not that far away. And it seems, I don't know. When I asked Eli this, I was like, what do you think? There's like a 5 % chance that this happens. And his response was basically like, well, everything is pure chaos. So who knows? 50-50. And that's fair. And so if I'm if I'm someone interested in making sure that TikTok continues to exist in the state of Montana and everywhere, why wouldn't you just immediately start yelling loudly to any judge who will listen about free speech? I feel the pessimistic take is that everyone has this kind of it can't happen here feeling where they believe that something is too outlandish to actually come to pass until it's already there.

28:10And so everyone's like, yeah, someone somebody else will stop it. This is so ridiculous. No one would ever like want this to happen. And then comes January and it's happened. Is it also possible that it's a tough look to be on the side of TikTok right now? I think that TikTok, you are, if you're siding with it, you are not only siding with China. I am putting scare quotes around everything. You are also siding with big tech. And so, yeah, I think that there's also, it's possible no one wants to take the reputational hit. There's a handful of younger Democratic congresspeople and they kind of talk to them during the TikTok hearings, right?

28:40Like, it's a tiny pocket of people who are like, this seems like a government overreach. Yeah. But they don't seem to have any power in the situation. Like they have very low risk. The other thing I've heard is that it's kind of it's all chilling effects that the goal isn't even necessarily to say we will literally crack down on TikTok for being in Montana. It's just to try to make Apple and Google drop it by making it toxic, like that you're never going to have to actually sue them. You're never going to have to technically punish them. You're just going to get them to kick TikTok off. And then it's going to be pretty debilitated there.

29:16So this is really interesting because Apple and Google don't – they don't have this ability right now. They can block apps by country, but they have never built the infrastructure to say, we know you're in Montana, and so we're going to block this app from being downloaded in Montana. I think the goal is that they would just kick them off in general. So you think the governor of Montana is like, I will ban TikTok in the United States of America because Apple can't figure out how to not allow downloads. It's like the flip side of the right to repair laws, where it's like once one state passes it, everybody has to follow along because they don't want to make one repairable fund and one not repairable fund.

29:47Yeah, but usually their states are like California and New York. Right. Yeah, well, it's Montana's turn. It's Big Buck's time. I was just saying, like, if you're TikTok, you're looking at, like, the raw population of Montana, and you're like, well. I think the counterargument would be that a bunch of states are trying to consider this, and Montana has just said we're the ones who pull the trigger first. And so if you're looking, I mean, look, I'm not going to put anything past California at this point in terms of making weird tech laws. But if you have a bunch of states that are saying we just want to try to ban TikTok, then, yeah, there's all this pressure on Apple and Google to just kick it out.

30:19And then you don't have to worry about all of the incredibly wonky geofencing stuff because it's just gone and you have to go to www.tiktok.com or sideload it. On your extremely powerful mobile web browser that Apple certainly loves you using. That's actually another really interesting piece of the puzzle, right? What does it mean to operate in the state? Do the ISPs of Montana have to block connections to TikTok servers? Oh, it was. It was part of an original draft that ISPs had to, they had the same punishments that app stores have. And then that got cut by the bill. Maybe because everyone's like, this is a little too great fire, Wally.

30:52Just a tiny bit. And so now TikTok just has to proactively block itself from being served in Montana? Yes. Amazing. Super great. I love this bill. I'm saying 50-50. If I'm TikTok, I'm suing. if I'm Apple and I'm Google, I am thinking about the net choices of the world filing a lawsuit on my behalf saying this is a weird restraint on trade, like gin up some complaint about that sort of idea. The other wrinkle with Montana is that so the restrict act and some other places make this kind of pretense of, yeah, it's a tick tock punishment, but actually it's just any company that's a threat to us. Montana is like, no, tick tock, you tick tock here, which raises really specific issues legally because you are not supposed to make a law that is just essentially trying to replicate punishing one company.

31:37I'd like to be on the knee lie from the state of Montana. Do you think I'm not? I encourage you to look at the books, sir. It was a great weekend. Oh, and we should note that they also expanded their government device band to include Telegram, Timu, and WeChat. We watch the app for Timu. It's the shopping app for billionaires. You get to shop like a billionaire. Boy, you should ban that ad. That ad was too sexy. That's all I got to say. Too many people whispering about you feeling like a billionaire. Weird. It was like the Spice Girls did an e-commerce ad. I don't know how to describe it. David, you talked to Hank Green, notable Montana creator and TikToker about this ban.

32:19Yeah, he was kind of nonplussed. When we go to break, we should play a few minutes of my chat with him because he was really interesting, but he was saying basically that he's in a good position because he's somebody who has a big audience on lots of different platforms, that the real people who would be hurt and affected by this are smaller creators who have really bet on TikTok in a big way. He also posited that what will happen is people will just like drive to Idaho and get TikTok and then come back. It'll be like going to the grocery store. You just like go out, download your TikToks and come back.

32:51And he was kind of of the mind that like, how on earth would you possibly enforce this and is this actually going to turn into anything but the point that he made that i thought was really interesting was to your big bach point there's this idea right now that you can just like rip and replace tiktok that if we just boot tiktok out of america we have youtube shorts and we have we can't do rip and replace either we should yeah we also can't rip and replace we tried that with huawei and that hasn't worked either but if you just kick it out that something will replace it everybody will have somewhere else to go it'll be an american-owned company you know everybody wins And that's just not how it works.

33:25Like TikTok has this very specific culture with different kinds of users doing different things and seeing different things and having different kinds of experiences than anywhere else. And even if you just suddenly were like, TikTok is dead, long live BicBoc, it doesn't work like that. And our options are either have TikTok or don't have TikTok, right? Like there is no third option. Well, so this is playing in two ways right now that I think are really interesting. One, directly related to TikTok. We were at Google I.O., saw a bunch of Google people. And I said, where is the culture of YouTube shorts?

33:56Totally. Like, I understand what the culture of TikTok is. To some extent, because Instagram had such a strong culture unto itself, even Instagram Reels has, like, a vibe to it. It's a very low-rent vibe. But it's kind of lifestyle-y. It is the thing that it is. It's just a desperate, craven vibe. Yes. It's Instagram Reels. It says, buy the shampoo, please. Yeah. And then YouTube Shorts is just like just shoveling in boots of anything that was successful on the other platforms. And it's like it doesn't have an identity. And it's the thing that should win. It's the thing that makes the most sense.

34:31And they haven't figured it out yet. And they were kind of like, yeah, we haven't figured it out yet. And then the other one that's really interesting is Blue Sky, right, which is as much of a clone of Twitter as you can get. And there's a lot of parts that we talked about this at length. There's a lot of parts of it that are just Twitter again. and then you see there's a whole new culture emerging on that platform. And maybe it will survive and maybe it will fail. Who knows what will happen? But it's not just, it's Twitter again. Like very actively people are like, we don't want to do this again.

34:56So if you get rid of TikTok, yeah, maybe everyone will go to YouTube Shorts, but it will never be the thing again. And some people will just quit and some people will choose to use it differently. And I agree that that particular piece of the puzzle, it's like once you have a big vibrant network, it either lives or it dies. Those are the only two choices. You can't port it somewhere else. It is bizarre that people have been saying that, given that I thought that network effects was just the thing that everyone talked about, how that was all that mattered online for years. No, the Internet is just no one understands it.

35:23It's a series of tubes and vertical videos. One more thing to talk about really quickly with Addy. Sam Altman was in front of Congress this week. They seemed to love it. Boy, boy, genius really wooed the members of Congress. Yeah, they asked if he wanted to run a regulatory agency. Will you be in charge? And his answer, from what I gather, was yes. He said, I love my job. I love my current job. It's okay. That's what you say right before he quit your job. I think James Vincent, who has a piece going up on this, called Chummy. Yeah. So, yeah, he was the sort of anti-Zuckerberg. So they want to regulate AI.

36:00They don't have the weird First Amendment problems they did with... We don't know that yet. Government famously failed to regulate social media. They famously failed to pass even privacy laws in this country. I think one of the reasons they failed to regulate social media is they just couldn't figure out the First Amendment. They're like, boy, this thing's – at some point, both Trump and Biden were like, yeah, we should just do some speech regulations. Yes. On both sides of the aisle, they're like, man, this First Amendment's really pesky. We'd like to tell Zuckerberg what to do. And they couldn't figure it out, which I think is on the whole good.

36:30On the AI side, they're like, this is a threat to humanity. We know what to do here. We're going to do export regulations. We're going to ban the chips from going to China. The whole list. And Sam Altman was like, I appreciate all of your ideas. I'm proposing an agency called Oasis, which is like Office of Artificial Intelligence. Yes. It's very good. I love a good fake acronym. It's very good. I love it. It is very sci-fi. It's Ready Player One. It's Ready Player One. Yeah. Yep. But there was this notion that this should definitely be regulated. I'm building a technology that I am not comfortable with.

37:04It should be regulated. It should be regulated. Obviously, Microsoft's very close with OpenAI. They feel the same way. It seems like that's coming and they're more open to it in a way that the social media companies were always like. I don't know. The number of times Mark Zuckerberg, I mean, like Facebook ran ad campaigns being like, dear God, please regulate us. And I think they knew that they were always going to be one step ahead. And if I'm going to be cynical about Sam Altman, he's sitting there being like, he's not saying like, please regulate us. He's like kicking back in his chair. He's being like, yeah, regulate us.

37:36What are you going to do? The thing James pointed out is that also he was saying, yeah, we should be regulated because in the future we might do really dangerous things, you know, in the future going forward. The sort of counterpoint is that there's the AI Act right now going through in the EU and that it focuses a lot on really present day harms. There's things like surveillance or like face recognition. and that this didn't really get that much of a hearing earlier this week in the U.S., that a lot of it is these kind of big apocalyptic scenarios, and they're potentially skipping over the things that might happen right now before AI becomes Skynet.

38:16Yeah. And Sam Altman, to his credit, has done, whether, you know, honestly or as a PR move, a very smart job of loudly saying he's worried about those things, too. So and I think that's the part that's different about social media, right? Because Congress was sitting up there saying social media is bad. And the CEOs were like, no, social media is a universal good that connects people to each other. In this one, Sam Altman is able to sit there and say, I'm worried about all the same things that you are. I'm not perpetuating them, but maybe someday in the future things will get bad. So let's work on it together.

38:45And he has at least like an ounce more credibility than the social media. The difference, though, is that social media, one of the reasons they can't say will prevent any bad use is because a lot of this is up to users. But social media is a tool used by a lot of people. And if you can't let people do what they want to some extent on social media, you don't have a product. In AI, I think that there is really you can say, yeah, we're going to have these very circumscribed uses. We will control absolutely everything you can do with AI, us as open AI. We will tell you exactly what you're able to say with these tools.

39:16We will tell you exactly what pictures you can generate. There's not really the same downside there. So, of course, they can tell Congress like we will control exactly how this is used. And if it's something bad, we'll stop it. Yeah, maybe. I mean, we're already seeing, like Sundar Pichai said, already they're seeing their AI used in ways they couldn't predict and didn't know about. It's like this stuff is. That's pretty normal. But the point is that they can stop that, is that they can see something and they'll say, you'll do that. And then they can just shut that down. Whereas if you do that enough in social media, then it no longer really feels like a thing that you are able to meaningfully do anything with as a user.

39:48True. Yeah, it is different in the sense that it is like the social media stuff is person to person and the platform is sort of underneath trying to solve it afterwards. Look, there's a dial labeled horny. And if Jack Dorsey had that dial on Twitter and he turned it down too low, Twitter would die. Sachin and L.S. He should. This Bing team needs to turn the dial down. It broke, man. Sachin and L.S. Just kick it. It's like Max Horny. Max Horny Bing. Let's do it. Addy, thank you so much. Always a delight. We're going to take a quick break. Here's David talking to Hank Green about the TikTok man in Montana.

40:20We'll be right back.

40:24so this like tiktok ban in montana has been brewing for a while you're a person who makes tiktoks from montana has this like changed your life have you been thinking about this at all like what do you do when this is happening honestly it seems like i think that we're mostly talking about it because it's a good sounding headline it's like montana first day to ban tiktok like because it because it ties into the broader narrative of a very important conversation. I'm not saying it's not important, but I do think that it is mostly news because it ties into the broader conversation rather than this thing itself being news for a few reasons.

41:00But mostly the big reason is it seems unlikely to actually happen. That's basically right. So, but let's play this out a little bit. So it's, we've got, you know, seven months, eight months, however long it is until this comes into play. For you as a person who is, you know, increasingly invested in TikTok, you have a big audience here, you make a lot of stuff here. What do you think about, even if there's a 2 % chance that TikTok goes away? And this is true of sort of the broader US ban of TikTok in general, right? And this is, I know, you think a thing you've talked about, but how do you sort of hold the idea in your head that this is a remote possibility, but it's not a possibility.

41:32It is a possibility. Well, what I'll do is if it seems possible, I'll go get a new phone that day and I'll download TikTok onto it. And then I'll have that phone for a few years. And TikTok will be a zombie app, Like I won't get updates on it. So that'll be a problem. But I'll keep making content and and I'll keep uploading it. Like I like I'm like, though, probably like the person you least should be talking about about this, because like, one, I have a well-established audience and I've like got all I'm well diversified among a bunch of social media platforms, which is tricky to do. And it's taken me 15 years, but I've done it.

42:07But there's a lot of TikTokers for who this is a much bigger deal. And that is both because like maybe their phone's old and they can't afford a new one and it's going to peter out. And like six months in, they won't be able to get TikTok or they have to drive to Idaho, which isn't. I mean, depending on where you live, it can be quite it could be a distance to get out of Montana. For me, it's about an hour. I kind of like the idea of like having to drive an hour to do TikTok. Well, just to download the app and then you drive back and then you can use it again. I like I'll just go to Idaho like when I'm in California, I'll update the app and then I'll fly home.

42:40You know, like the entire idea of geofencing the app store is very strange. Like, I don't know if they if anyone knows how to do that or whether that's even possible. Do you think that's possible? You know more about that than I do. If it makes you feel any better, even the lawyers we've talked to, they don't know either. Which is part of why I think this is such an interesting moment, because it's a series of weird untested things that no one has ever had to answer before. And it's like, is it likely to get through, even if you consider sort of each one of these hurdles a toss up, is it likely to get through every single toss up?

43:11Probably not. But again, like never rule out the weirdest outcome. This is the world we live in now. Who's to say? So, but back to what you were saying about sort of being a diversified creator who's a little less worried about it than most. Like, what do you say to those people? I'm sure a lot of them ask you, like, Hank, what am I going to do if TikTok gets banned? What do you tell those people? Like, go, you know, find a time machine, go back 15 years and make this thing called SciShow. It's pretty cool. it'll work really well for you? I mean, it's the same conversation that I have all the time, like for completely different reasons.

43:40People lose their TikTok accounts all the time. TikTok is a very weirdly moderated place. People lose accounts with millions of followers and there is no recourse. There's no person to email. There's nothing you can do. V. Pappas and I like go back a bit. And if a friend of mine says to me, Hank, my TikTok account got banned for no good reason. They said I was 13, but I'm a 45-year-old man or something like, seriously, there's no one I can email to fix that. You know, you're sort of building your house or your business on somebody else's land when you're making on social media platforms always.

44:18You know, and like YouTube changes its rules and they change how the algorithm works and they change how advertising works and they start demonetizing things. And like all this stuff happens and like it has really big impacts on people's businesses. And then a lot of times those businesses close down and there's nothing to do about it because you built your house on somebody else's land. So that that's not that new, honestly. So it's a very similar conversation. I do say to all creators all the time, try and develop close, direct connections with your audience, whether that's through newsletters or through Patreon or those are two of the really good ways to do it.

44:51And also diversify across platforms if you can. But that's very hard to do. Yeah. It's interesting to me that like the way you describe it is even as it becomes more work, TikTok is still worth the effort. And I just can't stop thinking about this thing you brought up where like there is definitely going to be, if this all comes out the way that it might, there's going to be like a black market for phones that have TikTok installed. And like, that's insane. What a bizarre world to live in. I mean, there's a black market for driving to Wyoming. Like, I don't know. Like, how is the geofence work?

45:24It's not like on the individual phone, I wouldn't think. I think it would be based in like VPNs. And I don't know. It seems like there's going to be ways to get around it. But I do like the idea of the black market TikTok phone, where I'm like scrounging around. I'm on Craigslist being like, I'm Hank Green. I'll pay$10 ,000 for a TikTok phone. Right. And somebody's like, I have a 2012 iPad that runs it. Do you want that? And you're like, OK, I'll take it. It's all that's out there. I did this with like my MacBook once where like they got rid of the SD card slot and I was like, I'm just going to keep buying old MacBooks until they bring that back because I'm not going to live that dongle life.

45:58But at what point does it become not worth the trouble? Because it seems like part of all of this is just to make TikTok harder and more annoying. And if you can sort of make it frustrating for people to use, maybe they'll leave. But what does that point look like? I mean, it's going to be really different for different people. Like, for example, for me, my audience, I have a great kind of content for YouTube shorts. Like people on YouTube like the kind of content that I make. But like TikTok is very culturally different. And the thing that we don't do a good job of understanding is that social media platforms are not the code.

46:33They are not the algorithm. They are the cultures that exist there. And like there are ways that the platform influences the culture and the ways the culture influences the platform. And it's much more complicated than we tend to give it credit for. And you won't, you can't recreate that culture. It's like trying to take, you know, the Gilman Street punk scene and move it to Boise. Like, it's just not going to happen. Like, if it becomes much easier and better to use YouTube Shorts and much harder and worse to use TikTok, what that will create is new cultures on YouTube Shorts. But it will not be a direct port.

47:10It will be a moment of cultural destruction. which is like a big deal. And I don't think that we give it credit for the bigness of that part of the deal. Like culture is important and it's a very strange thing for, I don't think that the people writing these laws have any idea the impact that they could have.

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49:34all right we're back inconceivable we just took a two hour long ad break so that we could watch the princess bride it's a good movie i'm just saying it's for children and you cannot be tough and i will watch it tonight good and it's gonna happen you're gonna you're gonna see some stuff as an adult that you just missed as a child. I'm sure that's true. It's just very true. Anyway, we're back. Richard Lawler is here. Hey, Richard. Hey, good to be back. Fan favorite Richard Lawler is here. We've heard the requests. We've heard the requests. They've been heard. Most of them were from me, but okay.

50:07Richard just calls the hotline once a week with a new voice saying, where's Richard? Yeah. It's good stuff. It's his AI voice. No, I don't use AI because AI is evil, but. There you go. See, culture war is here. You can't replace Richard, man. The robot? All right. We got to talk about some gadgets. It was a heady conversation just now. Yeah. And now we're going to talk about the stupidest TV ever made that David loves. The next TV that I own is what you meant to say. So get into it, man. The telly. Talk about it. Okay. So this thing is called Telly, which, first of all, unbelievable name. I hated it the first time I heard it.

50:41I've come all the way around. It's extremely good. It's a new company created by one of the founders of Pluto TV, which is one of the fast ad-supported streaming TVs. and its thing is basically they're going to give you the TV for free and in exchange they're going to have a second screen below your TV that's like a wide sort of Chiron looking thing about the third, the height of the TV but just as wide that is just for showing you ads. So you essentially, you get a free television and an ad bar in your house that is just a billboard that lives in your house and shows you ads while you watch TV.

51:15There are a bunch of other weird things about this TV. Many other weird things about this TV. So many. But I just want to tell you my two favorites. Okay. It's a 55-inch 4K TV. That's good. It has no built-in streaming stuff. So in addition to shipping you a TV, they will also ship you, I believe it's an Android TV dongle. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, it's not a smart TV. In the specs, they're like built-in streaming stick. And I thought they were just. No. It's just built into the box. i thought they were just trying to like meet the people where they are you know like it's just a dongle that plugs in i don't know what it is but it is just a dongle that plugs in oh that's so good they just i bet there's something like a patent thing where like if it's in the tv they have to pay an extra buck and they're just trying to shape every single dollar off to so that it can be free i suspect you're right yeah and then the other thing which we'll get to in a minute is that it has the worst and jankiest privacy policy in the history of the known universe we will come to this but i have not looked at this television i don't know i'm all in on this thing i feel like my basic thesis here is that a two screens is actually an extremely good idea i just get to have like a cnn style chyron just showing me sports scores whatever else into that david just had a kid and he misses being at the airport in the bar that's what i'm getting from this conversation this explains a lot about a lot of things just show me who's yelling about politics on the bottom at all times and then it's all ads anyway like watching tv now it's full of ads you go on youtube you watch ads there's a bunch of ad news this week about how popular ads are and ads are coming back so i'm like whatever give me one more ad and you're gonna give me a tv for free I'm super stuck on the streaming stick situation.

53:05Okay, so it says 4K streaming stick included, which again, I just read is like we're meeting the Walmart buyer where they are, right? No, they literally mean included. Let me read you from Emma Roth wrote a story about this and she said, unlike, this is the most like understated burn of all time. I love it. unlike most mainline smart tv operating systems tele os amazing name currently doesn't support third-party streaming apps like netflix little old app like netflix who needs it uh that's why tele comes bundled with a free 4k android tv dongle that you can use to watch whatever streaming service you want right because they don't need to worry about universal search or all the stuff where they need deals because they're just running ads on the bottom of the tv correct they built ironically a dumb tv with ads okay well so then here's my next question because it has on the spec sheet it's labeled future-proofed yeah and it's evidence of being future-proofed is quote modern hardware that's all it says powerful chipset again all it says what does you mean frequent ota updates bringing new and better experiences like ai and smart home control sure and then down at the bottom another box they ship yep somebody else invents that and then they'll just give it to you and then it has a camera yep and a mic array the camera is an hd camera no specs for video calling fitness and interactive gaming unclear where any of that runs it's not important don't worry about it it's for that it can't do that but that's what it's for and then it says mic array with quote hey telly voice control oh lord so this thing is run in some software yes but just not netflix not streaming apps not the software that you want that you have to make biz dev deals for and then as a motion sensor for wake up and interactive gaming is they think they've built a nintendo we well with ads and also to make sure that you are sitting there watching the ads that's what it is right so they're like their advertisers said we will only pay for this if we know for sure that somebody is actually sitting there watching television and they said oh crap we have to put a camera in everybody's tv and a microphone to make sure that they're actually in the room what weird features can we invent such that we can put these in there okay so again and if you opt out of sharing your viewing and activity data this is what it says in the privacy policy unfortunately that means you will no longer have access to the services and must return the television or you can pay five hundred dollars i am going to so immediately pay the five hundred dollars just to have this weird tv in my house screen tv for five someone's gonna hack it it's gonna be cool and they're gonna put like subway information on it stock tickers without their services and then they'll get sued i'm thinking like ultra widescreen gaming on the bottom but if this tv costs 500 and it has two screens and a soundbar and then do you know how shit this panel has to be you get two leds yeah on and off exactly it says here backlight i'm in love with this i love the audacity i love a new product if you are an old head like me you remember this thing called the QCAT from a long time ago?

56:04This is like an old, old internet controversy. Richard's nodding his head. Richard was on Slashdot and the QCAT basically. They handed out like barcode scanners to people and you were supposed to like barcode scan print magazines and then it would like take you to what? I don't know what they were supposed to do. And people immediately hacked these barcode scanners. Like QR codes before QR codes? David, where were you in 1999 when this was going down? I mean, this was like a big deal that people were hacking the barcode scanners. They were handing out for free. Like this was all over the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

56:32this was the story of the 2000s. And then people, it was the story of the 2000s. Well, other than a few other things. Yeah. It was like the QCAT and then like Bush v. Gore. It was like somewhere in there, a talented young artist named Britney Spears released her first single, but overshadowed by the QCAT. Anyhow, people started hacking it and not using their weird DRM software. And the company freaked out and started suing everybody. Oh, wow. And I'm, I don't know, Richard, I saw this thing and I saw that screen on the bottom and I was like, oh, this is a massive QCAT situation. People are going to take this.

57:06They're not going to pay for it. They're never going to sign up for the services. They are immediately going to hack it because it's running some janky version of Android, like the most hackable thing that's ever been created. And they're going to be like, I got myself a free two-screen TV. And this company is going to lose their mind. There is no chance this succeeds. No, they're going to be in business for like 15 minutes, but that's long enough for me to sign up to get one of these televisions. And that's all I record. We got to talk about the privacy policy. Okay. Go ahead. It's so cute. This is your TV.

57:37As far as I'm convinced, you're the CEO of this company. Credit to Shoshana Wodinski for being the first one to find this. In Telly's privacy policy, I believe it's not there anymore, but it was briefly. One of the things it talks about is the personal data of children, right? It's obviously super regulated what you can do with the personal data of children. And if you have a large television in your home, odds are if there's also a child under 13, they're going to see it. So they have to have a rule about this. So they go through all this stuff. If you're under 13, you can't have an account. You shouldn't have personal data.

58:04We're not collecting personal data. And then it says, if we learn we have collected personal data from a child under 13 years of age, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. And then a parenthetical that I am quite confident was not meant to be in the published version and is clearly written by a lawyer says, parentheses, I don't know that this is accurate. Do we have to say we will delete the information or is there another way around this? End parentheses. It's like literally the most saying the quiet part loud that has ever happened in the history of the world. It's good. The company wrote to us.

58:35We have a long statement from Dallas Lawrence, Tully's chief strategy officer. He says it's all out of context. It's literally it's in. It's right. The context is right there. It could not be more in context. It's the privacy policy. They published an early version of the policy. The TV is only meant to be used by people who are over 18, which natural for a television. Which they prove with the camera that watches you all the time. They've changed it. I'm just saying this thing, just read up on the QCAT. If you want to know what's going to happen with the telly, it's the thing that happened with the QCAT.

59:08This company has an entire business model based on tracking and advertising, but they've built a piece of hardware that they have no shot at locking down. Richard, are you going to buy one of these? And by buy, I mean allow yourself to be given one for free. No. I don't know if you can see here I have too many TVs already. Otherwise, I would be all over. Let's go. I may be, you know, on a restriction when it comes to displays. That's for the best. But this is like, this is the business model for all TV makers now. Vizio's been basically giving away TVs for years. Their TV business makes no money.

59:40The business that sells subscriptions and advertising makes money. That's exactly right. Tele is just doing it with more screens. Like, I don't see the downside. Well, the downside is that a$500 panel is not going to be good. When you describe full array backlighting, that doesn't mean like a flashlight. One array. Single array backlighting. It's fair. It's true. Every TV maker, we get this question all the time. All the time people are asking us, why can't I just buy a monitor and plug my Apple TV into it? And the answer is you can, and you can go out in the market and buy it. They're hard to find, and they cost thousands upon thousands of dollars because the architecture of subsidizing the TV is not included.

1:00:21Like every time you sign up for an app on Roku, Roku gets a piece. Just like on your phone. Every ad that's delivered on a Roku, Roku gets a piece. Remember when Peacock came out and wasn't on Roku's? They were arguing over ad serving. This thing is like, that seems hard. Another display. Just a whole other display for ads to run. I remember when Vizio was going to go public. They were going to have an IPO and they released this document, obviously, for investors about their business and all their opportunities. and they mentioned this little section in there about this company called Inkscape that was their big plan to make a ton of money.

1:00:57And I read it and I was like, wait, I've been reporting on Vizio for years and I've never heard of this thing. And that's because they had never talked about it really. And after that, they got sued because everyone found out what they were doing with their data. Yeah, so they've backed off of that. That was years ago. We since have gone public. But every TV on the market today can do ACR, automatic content recognition, and tell people what you're watching. It's just a thing. You can go turn off. I have it turned off on my TV. I don't even let my TVs connect to Wi-Fi. Do you know how you get a monitor?

1:01:27You buy a smart TV, you never let it connect to Wi-Fi. That's what I did. I went into the Eero settings and it was like, do you want to let this TCL thing connect to the internet? I was like, nope. Yep. So now I have America's dumbest smart TV. Oh, yeah. It hates it. Yeah. TV makers hate this one weird trick. Let me connect to the internet. Anyhow, I can't wait for you to get this TV. I'm so excited. And I can't wait for the people on Reddit to figure out how to hack this bottom display. Oh, yeah. I think it's legal for me to say that. I'm not saying you should do it. I'm not saying I'm doing it.

1:01:59I've never used a computer in my life. I'm just saying I anticipate the day that someone might do it. It is literally inevitable. It's just going to happen. Inconceivable. Talk about these Echo Buds. And the Beats Studio Buds, big week for headphones. Chris Walsh has been on a roll here. Yeah. Richard, what do you make of these Echo Buds? So Amazon, as they just want to do, came out with a bunch of new stuff. New Echo Pop, little colorful looking smart speaker that looks kind of like they took an Echo Dot and just like chopped it in half. And then the Echo Buds, super cheap, like prototype-y looking things with no design or interesting features whatsoever.

1:02:35But they're like$40 wireless headphones. So I can't be that mad at them. I don't know. What do you make of all this? They should have just called these the Amazon Basics Buds. Yes, that's absolutely right. Because then we all would have understood how to take this. You can put Alexa in it. You can do whatever. But you put Echo on it and then you say it's$50 and you show me these that have no branding. If you saw them sitting on a table, you would have no idea what buds they were. You would understand that, yes, these are earbuds in the most generic sense. And I'm sure they're probably fine. Amazon Basics.

1:03:03Yeah, I really I'm a big believer in cheap ones like this because I think we're entering a point where like if you want to spend$150 or more, you're like absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes to wireless earbuds there's so many good ones out there the the airpods are good the new beats ones are great like sony makes good ones jbl makes like there's tons of good ones out there but the low-end stuff and most of the people i know who don't want to spend that much money on headphones there but then they're like i literally can't find earpods anymore so like what do i buy i'm stuck buying wireless headphones so i'm like psyched that these exist but like you couldn't design these less than they are currently designed If you just imagine, close your eyes, don't close your eyes if you're driving, but pull over and then close your eyes and imagine the most boring, nondescript wireless headphones you've ever seen in your life.

1:03:52And the Echo Buds are like 40 % more boring than that. It's really kind of incredible. It reminds me of the, do you remember the first Chromebook, the CR48? Yeah. Where Google was like, we made this black rectangle that is not at all interesting and we don't know what to do with it. So we're just going to ship it and call it our first Chromebook. It was good. This is that again. I appreciate it. They are there. It's something. Amazon's going to give them to you for free if you sign up for Prime. Yeah, they'll just come in every box from now on. But the Beat Studio Buds Plus look amazing. They do look amazing.

1:04:25Richard, are you a headphone guy in general? Not so much, but I do have the Beat Studio Buds. Love them. Okay. I think that they are Apple's secret plan to get data from Android users. Because Android, I know a lot of people who use Android, and I know myself. This is probably the Apple product that I most quickly and most eagerly bought. And then I bought these new Beats Studio Buds Plus 2. Yeah, so the deal with the Plus, right, is basically they're just, they have this like amazing looking translucent design. They look great. Like the pictures Chris Walsh took with his review are beautiful and the headphones look fantastic.

1:04:57But otherwise, it's just like it's the Studio Buds, but like everything is slightly better now, right? Yeah, but slightly better processor, slightly better case with a little bit bigger battery, better active noise cancellation, better, you know, listening to you, all of those things. But it's still the same. Okay. And how do they fit? The one thing that has always worried me, and I've never actually used these myself, but they seem, they're very small. Like they don't have the stem that the AirPods do. They just, they're kind of a little circle that just sticks in your ear. Yeah. One of the reasons I like these in particular, because I also, I got the Pixel Buds around the same time with my phone.

1:05:31And those would always fall out of my ears. Like if just for no reason. These tiny never fell out of my ears. I could do anything. And they felt good. I could sit there and listen to podcasts for however long I wanted to. And I immediately went and got the Studio Buds Plus, or I will once I go pick them up. Yeah. They look really good. Like, just for aesthetic purposes alone, I kind of want to buy them. They're$169. They also come in regular colors, but the clear model is the only way to go. Yeah, you got to get them. Don't get regular colors. You got to look at these photos. Pull over in your car, look at Chris's photos.

1:06:01They're very good. He found a bunch of vintage clear gadgets. It's good. If you existed in the 90s, you know why. I had the clear QCAT, you know what I'm saying? I'm hopeful that this translucent design thing is coming back. Yeah. That, like, I would love to see all kinds of stuff like this. Like, Apple, make the next iPhone. This, like, frosted translucent thing, I'm in. Sold. That would be amazing on the next iPhone, right? Like, straight up, like, Bondi blue translucent. Yeah, it'd be amazing. Some people haven't liked them. They don't have wireless charging. They don't have, like, the in-ear sensor, I think, to automatically know when you take them out of your ear or things like that.

1:06:33So if that's something that you absolutely cannot live without, they may not do it for you. But yeah, I'm willing to plug these in for 20 minutes once a week to charge them. Yeah. I never wirelessly charge my AirPods. Can we just talk about the ear detection thing for a sec? Do you guys use the ear detection? Do you turn it on? No. No, I turn it off. I think ear detection is like the single most annoying software feature that exists on any device that I own. I turn it off immediately. Because it's one of the things that's like, okay, if I have two on, One of the nice things about wireless headphones is that I can take one of them off, talk to somebody or listen to something or whatever, and then put it back in.

1:07:07And for it to just pause and unpause and pause and repause and unpause every time I move. And then it's like if you move your head slightly too fast, it thinks you took it out. It's just awful. And to me, it's like the thing that Apple does where when you walk into your house, Apple is like, do you want me to switch devices that you're listening to? It's like, no. Just let me manage my headphones, Apple. like i'm good if i wanted to pause i would press the button that's yeah i just i'll literally all i have to do is tap my ear like it's gonna be fine when i'm reaching up to take it out of my ear i'll just tap on my ear with my hand that's already right there yeah it makes me so crazy apple like try less hard turn it off i do okay but i do it you're still thinking about it every time i don't even use apple headphones anymore yeah i have it on the sony ones that i use and it's still like drives me nuts i don't like this yeah it's not good the sony ones they um they really believe that you should be able to put your hand to the ear cup so you can like go into transparency mode and like talk to the you know the flight attendant and i'm like every time i try to do this i'm like i look like a jerk isn't the natural behavior you just slide the you slide the ear back that's that's like not this thing we're like yeah excuse me yeah no awful awful nonsensical okay we got to take a break and we'll come back for lightning round we'll be right back

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1:10:56All right, we're back. Do you know the QCAT actually looked like a cat? I have to look this thing up now. It's like C-U-E cat? Yeah. How did I not know? Oh my God. Because you were a baby. but like the wikipedia page is long and most of it is the controversy section this thing is horrifying i'm gonna put a link to this in the show notes and i don't recommend looking at it because it's the last thing you see before you die it's real bad rich and i like lived through these were like the og internet forum wars it made time magazine's list of the 50 worst yes yes it was one of the it was one of the things that happened maybe not one of the best or most important, but it was definitely one of the things.

1:11:36Yeah. All right. Lightning around time. I'm sorry. It's on Time Magazine's list of the worst inventions. Right after QCAT comes subprime mortgages. That's how bad the QCAT was. The early 2000s were rough, man. It was a hard time to be alive. Wow, yeah. I'll just say one day, they're going to make the big short about the QCAT. No, it'll be about DivX. Oh, DivX. Oh, man. The original DivX. All right. Richard, we cannot be re-litigating slash dot from 2002 right now. Let's go. Let's dig through some Circuit City flyers. I'll just give people a peek into the Verge editorial process. We had our daily editorial meeting today, and Liz Lopato was like, Twitter's falling apart.

1:12:22Search is whatever. It's all weird. We're back to the basics. We're back to the old internet. And that was supposed to be a rousing call to blog and to build connections. And Richard's like, we're doing DivX.

1:12:35my qcat drama let's go find the slash dot flame wars of ancient history and we're gonna do them all again on the site i'd love it i think windows is a monopoly linux forever this is the year of the linux desktop it is it is it is truly the year of the linux desktop or two screen tvs all right lightning round david let's talk about ads can i just do some ads to more ad stuff the ad guy i really don't know how it became my brand that i believe in ads but here we are weirdly large amount of ad news this week it's the it's the upfronts for a lot of the hollywood studios which is weird and awkward and complicated because the writer's strike is happening so it's all been very messy but one of the things that all these companies are announcing is more ads because they want to make more money and they're realizing that subscription only streaming is not actually all that good a business but it turns out subscription plus ads is a much better business.

1:13:29So Netflix announced that its ad tier already has almost 5 million users, which is actually a pretty big number for as quickly as it has come out. YouTube is bringing what it calls unskippable 30-second ads to TV, which sucks real bad. It's mostly replacing two 15-second ads, but they just want to be more like TV, which means they're always like an ad. They've always wanted to be more like TV. Right, and it's going to be more prestigious. It's only going to be for when you're watching stuff on your TV, but they're going to be bigger, more serious unskippable ads uh and then max the streaming service that is coming from warner brothers discovery which is combining discovery plus and 8th vl max has said that it's going to have shorter ad breaks than other streamers don't forget it's going to cost at least ten dollars a month for the quote ad light plan which as i have said implies the existence of an heavy plan but we will leave that alone um and i believe he said david as love said it's going to be between three and four minutes of ads per hour, which is substantially better than like if you watch broadcast TV, it's something like 18 minutes of ads per hour.

1:14:30So three to four is pretty good. But, uh, that is still for people paying$10 a month to also watch four minutes of ads per hour, uh, is going to frustrate some people. So ads, ads are coming y 'all. They are. The world is not going down with the number of ads that it has. It's only going to get worse. so just get your tv for free cool from teddy this is horrible all right mine speaking of costs going up uh verizon rejiggered its plans this week they're bad they're basically like unbundling a bunch of services people are very upset about this and saying they're going to quit verizon the problem is if you want a new iphone or a new s24 or a new pixel fold when they hit they're going to offer you subsidies to get the new plans so new plans have left stuff they're more expensive this is only an entree to what i actually want to talk about well i do think it's interesting though because there was a minute there where the bundles coming from carriers were really good like i got a like apple tv and disney plus and peacock and all kinds of stuff free from your carrier and i started like it became a thing i started telling people about it was like a new streaming service comes out it's like oh tell your carrier because there's a pretty good chance that there will be some deal because they're all so desperate a these companies need subscribers So they're going through your carrier because you already have a bill.

1:15:46And so they can say up that way. And B, all these carriers are like desperately competing with each other. And so you're going to win. And now all at once, that seems to be getting. Well, it was Verizon that did the most of it. Verizon did the most, but T-Mobile started to push on some of that stuff. T-Mobile, APNT just like never did anything. They're like, we've got you. They bought HBO. They bought HBO and then sold HBO. Like, I think their willingness to participate dramatically decreased. That is fair. But Verizon gave a bunch of stuff away. now all that stuff $10 a month extra basically they're like you can pick your perks and you just add them up and you end up paying about$10 a month extra it's less good it's less good people are very annoyed by this especially the Disney Plus being out of the bundle which I think a lot of people are depending on I want to point out that there was a big conference this week they called it a big 5G event it was a telecom conference RCR Wireless wrote about it Allison Johnson and I were looking at it and there were multiple sessions at this industry conference about 5G, where the carriers just admitted that all of their fancy plans to make more money with 5G have come to nothing, that they have not monetized 5G in any ways that they were not monetizing 4G.

1:16:56We were going to do self-driving cars. We were going to have AI generation at your house and at your Walmart. Yeah, you were supposed to be getting surgery in a self-driving car. and these new Verizon plans are an incredible example of this because remember all that zero latency robot surgery Richard's talking about all that depended on millimeter wave it depended on this mid-band stuff the plans now tear out the good 5g so you have to buy the most expensive plan to get mid-band 5g you're just getting on the cheaper ones you're just getting re-farmed LTE spectrum and it's like what was the point of all of this so we're just admitting failure on all of that basically it was just a disaster so ultra alison right about this uh verizon is playing its cute little games of not including quote-unquote ultra wideband midband 5g on its lower tier plan only the slower nationwide 5g which is just lte plus or whatever i love that they call midband ultra wideband first of all it's incredible it's perfect perfect but it's like oh this just didn't work like this whole race to 5g rhetoric all the meetings we like the amount of just add dollars spent.

1:18:05They built the networks. Great. The networks are indeed faster. It is very cool to see how many people can stream video out of NFL stadiums during these Taylor Swift concerts. They've increased the capacity of the networks. Richard, I don't know about you, but I have not yet received a robot surgery in the back of a salt-driving car. Not yet. Maybe next week. I'm just saying, no one's hacking a telly in the back of a salt-driving car. That's the Richard optimism I'm looking for right there. Just incredible. We'll link the RCR piece in the show notes, but Allison put it in a quick post on the site, but the plans are getting more expensive and the bundles are going away and the incentives are going away because at the end of the day, no matter how hard they have tried for decades, they cannot be anything more than a dumb pipe.

1:18:48Right. They've tried everything. Like they got rid of net neutrality. They don't even have the courtesy of excusing the bundled streaming services from the data caps. That's what they were supposed to do. That was the nightmare scenario and they won't do it because they need the money. Right. Well, and I just I feel so vindicated by this because for so many years we just kept asking people, OK, you're going to make the network faster. That's awesome. What is that going to change other than I can download Netflix movies slightly faster than I could before? And you can. I just took a trip. You can.

1:19:17I was on a plane. It was great. I have downloaded many a Netflix movie. Thank you for that, everybody. But there are millions of people who have home Internet from T-Mobile and stuff. It exists. Yeah. Yeah. And it changed nothing for anybody. Like all of this new world we were supposed to enter because all of this worked. Well, so I think Richard's saying for the home internet, like the customers, you can't get good fast internet and they've got a T-Mobile home connection. Maybe they're a little bit happier. Sure. Yeah, that's something. But the thing that they can't do, which is like make more money because more people are doing more things on the internet.

1:19:48They just didn't figure it out because ultimately it wasn't there. I'm telling you a 5G and crypto, two biggest type balloons of recent memory. They're right there on top of each other. I'm not sure. And the QCAT. Right? Big three. The old big three. Let us know. What do you think is a bigger hype balloon, 5G or crypto? I'm dying to know what the readers think. All right, Richard, what's your landing around? Well, you know, I don't want to bring up anything that's overhyped. Let's just talk about the Tesla robot. The last time that we saw it, the more advanced version was not walking. It was not really moving.

1:20:22It waved its arm. We now saw a video with some segments that were sped up to 2x speed so that, you know, we weren't sitting there for a half hour watching it hold things and occasionally take steps. So without falling over, which is an achievement. How confident are we that this wasn't a person in a suit pretending to be a robot? There are holes in them, so there is probably not a person in a suit, I think. That's good. Was this rendered by AI? I don't know. It's really hard to say. Yeah, it is a video. They are moving slowly. It's weird. Yeah. And, you know, it's like so they show it picking up things and putting them in a box after it watches a person pick up things and put them in a box.

1:21:00So you could spend however much it costs one of these for that. Do you know that walk that people do when you like they've like done too many squats at the gym that day and they can't quite move their legs completely? That's how these robots walk. Oh, I very much relate to this robot. I move exactly like that. So many squats. This robot's yoked. He just kind of, you see what I mean? Like, look at this guy. He's just got his knees out and he just kind of shuffles like every step might be his last. Yeah. Look, I know we promised not to talk about Elon. I'm just going to end here. Elon promised on CNBC in the same interview that a chat GPT moment for Tesla was coming.

1:21:35That's what he said. That's what he said. And maybe it's the robot. Maybe it's the self-driving robotaxis that he promised again. He said that was coming any minute now. Do you know that if you buy a Tesla, the terms of service in a Tesla prevent you from using that Tesla with any other self-driving network? Like any other RoboTaxiFleet. Really? He said this on the television. Oh, wow. And then he quoted The Princess Bride. I really just wanted to come back to the one lesson I want to offer the audience today. If you are in a situation where you need to sound tough, do not under any circumstances quote The Princess Bride.

1:22:08But at the very least, quote it correctly. Yeah. Like, use the words that they use in the movie. And don't try to do an impression of Manny Patinkin's accent. Do Fezzik. Like, do Andre the Giant. Okay. So they just announced you can upload two-hour videos on Twitter now if you're a Twitter Blue verified. That means you can upload all of Princess Bride. By the way, Twitter movie privacy is very funny. People are just doing it left and right because they fired everybody who does compliance at Twitter. It's amazing. I watched, like, a little too much of the Super Mario Brothers movie on Twitter, and I was like, I feel bad.

1:22:42I should not be doing this. And then you just did some more of it. We owned that copy of the Princess Bride, the van, man. I already paid my money for that movie alright that's it that's the Verge cast it was a good one thanks to Addie Robertson for joining us thanks to Hank Green for joining us that's a great time Richard thank you so much man of course alright when's this show what's happening a bunch of stuff you talked to Ed Markey about AM radio in cars about which he has I'm told very strong feelings very strong feelings about AM radios we're going to talk about that we're going to talk about Zelda I assume this is going to be like a 7 or 8 hour episode because we're going to talk about Zelda So it's going to be a fun one.

1:23:17I'm excited about it. Very cool. That's on Wednesday. We'll be back next Friday. That's the show. Rock and roll.

1:23:27And that's a wrap for VergeCast this week. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at vergecast at theverge.com. The VergeCast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters. That's it. We'll see you next week.

1:23:57I don't care.

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