Nintendo's Switch 2 is here — sort of

34:12All right, we're back. Addy Robertson's here. Hi, Addy. Hi. Our resident Red Note expert, as it turns out, was just teaching us how to pronounce the correct name of everybody's favorite new TikTok competitor. Do you want to give us a lesson here on what it's actually called? I need to caveat this, that I am not Chinese and I have not spoken Chinese for a very long time. My impression is Xiaohongshu. Okay. Richard, how do you feel about that? Xiaohongshu? I'm getting there. I feel like I'm getting... I'll have it by next week. I'll be a star on it. The first Xiao is little, and then Hong is red, and then Shu, which is book.

34:55This app is literally called Little Red Book? I believe so, yeah. I think the U.S. government is going to love that. Possible that, you know, there's a better colloquial translation. This is what we've come to. So, okay. the the scene setting i just want to do here real quick before we get into it is uh the the potential tiktok ban is now two days away as you're hearing this three days away as we're recording it uh we did a whole thing with lauren feiner on tuesday show talking about what might happen and then it feels like a hundred new possibilities appeared since tuesday about what might happen so uh i want to talk through some of the things that have come up some of the things we think might be happening and the deep hilarity of what everyone has done in response to the impending TikTok ban.

35:41But let me just start by throwing out some of the like possible outcomes that seem to have arisen over the last few days. And we can talk a little bit about them. Outcome number one, I would say probably most likely in terms of actual things that might happen is some kind of delay in the ban. Senator Ed Markey introduced something or said he was going to introduce something that would give it a 270-day extension to either divest or be banned. There was, was it Trump was going to do an executive order that was going to delay it by 60 or 90 days? Yeah, he's floated one at least. Okay, so a lot of ideas in the area that like, we're just going to kick the can down the road a little bit.

36:24Addy, does that strike you as like a real plausible outcome here? Well, there was always the option of kicking the can down the road 90 days if there is a deal in place. And depending on the definition of what a deal is, I think that's kind of where people are leaning is we're just going to give them time to figure this out. It seems pretty unlikely to me that they're going to pass a whole new law in what, like three days. I mean, there's some other stuff going on in the political universe, too. So I think you're probably right on that. This is the thing that I don't understand, though, is like, can anyone actually do this stuff?

37:01Because there's like there's there's the ban on Sunday and then there's an inauguration day on Monday and then. Something will happen and TikTok will be back like there's there's rumors that TikTok is going to go away just for a day and then potentially come back like I just don't know how to handicap the realistic possibility of any of this right now. Some of it depends on what the Supreme Court does. And unfortunately, we have been frantically waiting for a ruling for several days now. But part of the question is, OK, so the rule here is it's either banned or they have to bite dance has to divest it.

37:39And the question of what divestiture means, like what can actually satisfy that requirement is a little bit of an open question. I think the thing that Trump really wants and that a lot of people really want is the idea that they can just switch a little bit of ownership around and maybe shuffle the board a bit in a way that satisfies the Chinese government and the ruling for divestiture. And then nothing necessarily changes that much, but it comes under the ownership of someone American. And the Chinese government doesn't feel like it's lost the TikTok algorithm or like it's gotten strong armed.

38:14And then at that point, if there are disagreements, you still get to have this three month delay in which they could hammer them out. What would that in theory look like if it's if it's basically so the number I've heard, at least, is that this the bar for foreign ownership under this bill is I think it's 20 percent ownership. Yeah. So in theory, all all ByteDance would have to do is find a way to lower its ownership stake under 20 percent and then everything would be OK. Is that is that the idea here? I think that's a thing that could happen and could be logical. It is possible that you could still then have questions about, all right, but does ByteDance still potentially have some kind of backdoor?

38:53But at the very least, that does seem like it has some kind of reasonable standard in the law that, yeah, you just reduce the dependence. That just doesn't make any sense to me because, again, if the big argument we're having here is about national security and access to data, you know what buys you the backdoor is 20%. Whether you have 49 % or 20 % or 99%, you're still going to have the admin login, right? Richard, am I insane here that it feels like this solves nothing if this is an actual thing we're going to do? Would you give a 20 % owner an admin login? Yeah. No, no, no. You're a minority owner.

39:31No admin login for you. And they've already done some things like the Project Texas, moving the data around. It sounds like we've got this group project that's due on Sunday and no one has done the work. You've got the Chinese government. They're not picking up the phone. You've got one of these students that's already checked out Biden. He's on his way out. This is not his grave. You've got someone coming in, but they're not going to be here before the due date. And Congress and the Supreme Court just haven't done it. I really wish I had a clever way to build on this analogy. But the things that complicate that are that, A, nobody wants to finish the project.

40:03everybody's sick of this. Trump doesn't want TikTok to shut down on his watch. Biden, as far as we can tell, there's some level of buyer's remorse in the administration is maybe trying to find a way to delay it. And then the Chinese government and ByteDance, obviously, before the ban, they're going to give you the most apocalyptic pronouncement ever. They're not going to say, oh, yeah, no, it's fine. We're in talks with all these other guys. They're going to just wait until the last minute to see if they can hammer on a deal. Yeah, I mean, to that end, there was a report going around, I forget exactly where I saw it, that one possible outcome is that TikTok will just kind of performatively go away, just like pull the plug more aggressively than it even needs to on the 19th just to prove how bad it would be if TikTok was gone.

40:48Because I think a lot of people have been talking about the idea that what might happen is it might just sort of slowly degrade over time, that people who have it on their phones will be able to continue to use it. but that actually what might happen is tiktok will just be like oh you want to see tiktok gone tiktok's gone suck on that and it'll just be sort of it'll it'll just make everybody miss it a little bit for 24 hours and then we'll come back on inauguration day uh with with chuchu the ceo sitting on the day i said inauguration day with trump like there's a version of that that actually makes a lot of sense to me that tiktok is gonna be like oh you want to ban us check this out just is a flex.

41:25That both makes political sense and it might kind of be necessary because hosting services also have to work with have to cease working with ByteDance and Oracle hosts a bunch of American data. So it's possible that you're going to see that no matter what. Yeah. So are we really at a point where like just none of this makes sense and anything could happen? I guess we might get a real answer if and when we hear from the Supreme Court, which I would say we're all sort of surprised has taken this long to issue any kind of pronouncement about how it feels? I think not everyone is surprised, but it is definitely very annoying and not people's first choice.

42:04This is also all ignoring that. Obviously, I say this in a way where it's bad, but to me, much like by far funniest option, which is the law goes into effect and Trump says he's not going to enforce it. And then, yes, all of the app stores have to play chicken and like see if they're going to go with these rules. So which based on Supreme Court arguments, it sounds like that's still a pretty huge risk for them. But that is still an outcome that people have not completely ruled out. Yeah. Can you just game that out a little bit? We talked about this with Lauren a little on Tuesday, too. But it does seem like this question of if if Trump puts out an executive order on day one saying, I'm not going to enforce this law for some period of time.

42:50In theory, everyone could just go terrific and resume business as normal and TikTok continues. But there seems to be this sort of extant pressure on all of the players that exist even outside of that. Can you just explain what the tension is there for those companies? There are a few different tensions. The first tension is that it is very risky to trust Trump's loyalty on a thing and that this creates a lot of leverage to if you make him mad, let him do something that's going to hurt you very badly. There is also the chance that the administration could be held in contempt of court if they have gotten an explicit order to enforce this law and they just refuse to.

43:31And then there's also the chance that even if they say they're not going to enforce it, the platforms and the app stores say, yeah, this is just too big a risk. It doesn't matter what you say. We're kicking them off. Richard, what would you do? If I'm who in this? You're Google. You're Sundar Pichai. And you're sitting there in front of the TikTok is in the app store switch. What are you doing? I'm replacing it with YouTube shorts.

43:57Just every time someone searches TikTok, it just instantly takes you to YouTube shorts. The thing is that I love is that Google legitimately has the power technically to just do that. Like if you Google TikTok, it's like, nevermind, you wanted YouTube shorts, right? There's only YouTube shorts now. TikTok never existed. You didn't even, TikTok was a figment of your imagination. There has only ever been YouTube shorts. Speaking of YouTube shorts, this comes back to our favorite app, Red Note slash Little Red Book. One of the funniest things that has happened this week is a lot of people, rather than leave TikTok for, quote unquote, more stable places like Instagram or YouTube Shorts, these other platforms that have just basically relentlessly copied TikTok for several years.

44:46people have instead gone the other way and found more Chinese apps. Rednode and Lemonade being, I would say, the big two. Addy, can you explain what these apps are and how this is happening like this? Okay, so Lemonade and Rednode are both their Chinese apps that present, in theory, basically all of the same risks as TikTok. Lemonade is owned by ByteDance, the same parent company as TikTok. and I feel like at this point right now there's a little bit of it's kind of a free-for-all people are just this is summer break everybody's experimenting and that if TikTok were long-term banned then we would see people say I need to make money I'm going to go to these platforms even though I find them boring and they annoy me so I don't know what the long-term future would be but yeah the short-term future is that people have gone to just the exact same thing and possibly to some level just to actively spite the people who passed this law.

45:49Oh, I mean, I think it's extremely just to spite those people. I mean, the goodbye to my Chinese spy thing has become rampant on TikTok, and everybody is making fun of it by going to these apps. What was the thing I saw today? Duolingo is booming, and suddenly tons of people are wanting to learn Mandarin in order to be on these apps. This bit has now gone so far that I'm like, at what point is this not a bit? And at what point is everybody just going to excitedly start using Chinese social media apps? I think we're there. I think we're at the point where it has stopped being a bit. I mean, people went over to this app, Xiao Hongxu.

46:25I'm going to get there. I'm going to get the pronunciation right. Just so I can get my following up. They found out that Cardi B has been there for years posting. Really? Yes. The weird thing about it is that unlike the other apps, they don't separate their Chinese and American audience or Chinese and international audiences. So you suddenly have these people talking directly to people from China in a way that they probably never have. And there's something there. I don't know how long it will last, if it will be banned too, or what might happen. But something has happened. Also, American companies apparently cannot make good algorithms.

47:00Yeah, I will say I have continued to be flummoxed by this fact that like it is clearly true that there is something about TikTok that neither YouTube nor Instagram has replicated, despite both being desperate to replicate TikTok. Like they're just nakedly trying to do TikTok. They're not even trying to do like their own versions of TikTok. They're just trying to do TikTok. And still nothing has been able to quite do it. And to your point, Richard, people are flooding to these other apps and being like, yes, this gives me the same thing. And it is like, what have these Chinese companies, in particular ByteDance, which just keeps making identical looking apps under different names, apparently, they've just figured out some turn in the system here that no one else has figured out or is willing to do or something.

47:49And it's just very strange to me. Like somebody, Adam Masseri should be able to just turn the dial to full TikTok. And they should have just known how to do this by now. And yet they can't. Yeah. I mean, have you used Instagram reels? Like sometimes I'll get stuff that I like, but sometimes it'll show me like something absolutely horrible that makes me never want to open that app again. And TikTok has that problem much less. I will say YouTube is the one that really gets me. YouTube is the one that I hate the most and frustrates me the most because YouTube, no service on the internet has as much good declarative information about what I want than YouTube.

48:29I have clicked on so many things on YouTube on purpose for 15 years. I have been like, I would like to watch this video for 20 minutes. Like it should have my interests nailed. And like YouTube music is actually very good as a result of that because you turn on YouTube music and it just looks at everything you've ever watched and listened to on YouTube before and suddenly starts giving you recommendations. So the cold start problem there is solved and it's awesome. And yet shorts is nonsense. It doesn't make any sense to me that it's like YouTube knows me or should know me better than any service on the internet and it cannot figure out which short to recommend to me.

49:06And TikTok is just like, do you wanna watch new girl clips? And I'm like, sure, I'll watch new girl clips. Like, great, let's do it. YouTube cannot do that. And it drives me nuts. And Eddie, I want to know what you think about this, but I think that the saying goodbye to my Chinese spy taps into my personal conspiracy theory about TikTok that I've always had, which is that, and also about a lot of AI things, is that it's not AI, it's just a guy named Al, and that there's a lot more human curation behind the scenes. And that's why it's so good, is because you're kind of tapping into these cues of content, and there's just someone saying, oh yeah, that's a good video, I'll put it at the top.

49:38And that's why you keep getting good videos. That's my guess. and I, whatever it is, it would be great if someone else could figure it out because someone needs to know that I want to see 1980s car ads. And that's the only thing I want to see. And if you just show me that, I'll never close the app ever again. But Eddie, what do you think? I unfortunately cannot speak to the actual algorithmic changes here. I know that for a long time, TikTok did really push to be sort of the shiny, happy place on the internet, which sometimes produced weird, very bad effects. Like it would demote content from people who seemed likely to be bullied, which was, say, LGBT people.

50:16But it's possible that it's just optimizing for a different metric than, say, Instagram, which is constantly dialing up and down things like political content and news and can't seem to figure out what it's going for, at least that's meta in general. So I can't tell if it's that it's badly tuned or if it's tuned in a way that has sort of different business logic and that just produces less of a certain thing. Or possibly that it's the user base itself ended up producing a thing and the network effects kind of snowballed that. I do think there's something to that last part in particular that I think TikTok got kind of a last mover advantage that by being able to just show up from scratch and build something, especially in kind of the like it blew up in the U.S., especially during the pandemic when everything was weird and everybody just wanted like an escape and dance challenges suddenly make sense that I think in the same way that if you had just like in 2019 and 2020 just flooded Instagram with dance challenges, a lot of people actually would have hated it.

51:21But on TikTok, because it was new and different and people hadn't really experienced it yet, it felt good. And so I think like to some extent on Instagram and on other places, you're trying to like you have to unlearn some things before you can relearn some things, whereas TikTok just got to show up and do things differently. And I think that actually really worked to its benefit. But then again, I keep coming back to this idea that everyone has decided that TikTok is the best at it. So just go do that. Like just piss off all the Instagram users for three days and then they will decide that they love it because everybody hates Reels.

51:55And the only thing anybody says about Reels is that it is just old TikToks. And so it's like, you don't have anything to lose. Just throw the thing away and make it TikTok. And it'll probably work. Throwing out the rulebook has had some advantages. And I think like a lot of people during the pandemic, I opened up TikTok. I was kind of bored and it immediately diagnosed me with ADHD in a way that an app should not do. It's bad. It should not diagnose medical conditions like that. It was correct. And Instagram Reels doesn't really do that. And I'm just like, you could probably do a little bit more to figure out who your users are.

52:30Yeah. You have enough data. Yeah, it's just it's just sitting there. So, OK, we should talk about one other possible TikTok outcome before we fully throw up our hands and just wait for somebody to tell us what's happening, which is the Elon Musk of it all. Richard, can you can you make this make sense to me? There has been some sort of loose reporting that maybe what will happen is Elon Musk will save TikTok. Well, in one of the possibilities that Adia has mentioned is that ByteDance could divest, that they could own less of TikTok. So someone would need to own more, someone who has a lot of money and who can get a lot of money because TikTok is unquestionably worth a lot.

53:06So who can get a lot of money in a hurry to buy a social media site? Elon Musk, who is much loved in China? Elon Musk. who might be able to be influenced by the Chinese government because he needs to sell cars in the country and they control that. And also the resources in the country to make those cars. Elon Musk. Fits a lot. I mean, I don't know if he checks all of the boxes, but he does check a lot of them. Also the box of being tied specifically to the Trump administration, which has made China hawkishness a big deal. It's as close as you can come to selling part of your company to the United States as you can kind of get right now is selling it to Elon Musk.

53:43do we think this is a real possibility Addy if you were to like handicap this on the list of possible outcomes do you think this is like X absorbs TikTok is a real thing that might happen I might phrase it as TikTok absorbs X but I think it's not impossible it seemed I think much it would be called like X video and everybody would be like oh I'm an X videoer right now I mean once all the porn sites get banned X videos will be up for sale again. Yeah, no, I think that for a while there was a lot of noise about how the Chinese government absolutely was going to refuse, but given all the reports now, it certainly doesn't seem impossible.

54:24It seems like a terrible idea. Like, I hate the idea that this might happen, which makes it potentially likely that it's going to happen. Like, Richard, to your point, no, like, I think one of the two things, really, that I have seen as total impediments to this are TikTok is enormously expensive and China is not interested in selling. And I do think it's possible that Elon Musk is the only person capable of solving both of those problems. He has clearly an infinite ability to raise money. And also, like you were just explaining, is as palatable to the Chinese government as any person in the United States for a variety of reasons.

55:01it like it fits. I don't like it, But it kind of fits. Well, I guess I'll see you guys on Xiaohongshu. I'm interested in it because I think it will be the absolute purest test of inertia you could possibly devise. That TikTok is just so notoriously moderated. That is the thing that defines it. And it also it is a place that tends to try to at least, I think, focus on positivity ostensibly. That is the absolute opposite of what Elon Musk is interested in. It is a thing that is notably full of silos and you're trying to just split people up into the perfect thing for them as much as possible. And X has now become a thing that just feeds you Elon tweets.

55:45They're just kind of polar opposites to each other. And it seems to be not really just a business decision on Musk's part. It's a thing that he just genuinely thinks social media should be. And I'm very curious how the TikTok community would react to that. Yeah, I mean, I keep coming back to I made the the ship of Theseus comparison on Tuesday show, too. But there is, to me, this real thing where like, there is no version of TikTok that gets divested that still to me feels like TikTok. And so it's like, the upside is it would continue to be TikTok, it would have a lot of users, it might be called x videos, but it would, the people wouldn't have to go somewhere else.

56:26And like I said, that's a very powerful thing. But like, I don't know, it turns out people are willing to go somewhere else. The number of people who just randomly signed up for an app with literally a Chinese name in the American app store. Like, it actually turns out maybe the inertia is not nearly as strong as anybody thought. That when people need somewhere to go, they'll go. I don't want to over determine that given just how big TikTok is. And of course, some people are going to jump ship. but I do yeah it does seem like other platforms say x have meaningfully lost some number of users and that that definitely can happen yeah I mean it is I think the the x thing is actually a really interesting comparison there because like we we've talked about this a lot where there was the there was the big boom on mastodon that slowed down and then there was the big boom on threads that continues to happen but now threads is weird and there's now there's been a big boom on blue sky and blue sky is like meaningful and and large now but is still a tiny fraction of the size of threads which is still a fraction of the size of x and so maybe for elon musk what you've learned is uh i you can weather these storms because they end up being really vocal and maybe not that sticky over time i think one thing that gets really tricky there is what happens to cap cut in really any of these scenarios because in a way that's maybe different from all other kinds of social platforms, the way that you make the videos really influences the videos that are on the platform and the people who want to use the app.

57:53And having a video editor that a lot of people like to use and find easy to use to make really high quality videos has been a huge part of TikTok's appeal. So that's kind of just another question that has to be asked. And in the case of something like X or something like that, that's not really the issue. Everyone can type into the box the same way that they did before. But if something happens to the editor just as much as the algorithm, that's a problem. Right. And on the flip side, that combination of things might make TikTok harder to copy than anything else. Like you could sort of peel away each of the pieces that makes it work.

58:31But as long as it has that collection of things, it's going to be harder to copy TikTok than it is to just like, in theory, all you need is a bunch of people in text boxes and you can beat x at its own game like that's essentially what threads has been trying to do tiktok has a larger collection of things that are hard to beat yeah there are also just sort of symbiotic businesses like they've tried to move into book publishing based on the popularity of book talk which is not like a killer app it's not going to destroy it but it does mean there's just a lot of stuff going on here for sure um all right well this is like god help us we're going going to do this again next week, I'm sure.

59:10But before we before we go to a break, Addy, can we talk about the other Supreme Court thing that happened this week? We can. You spent, I would say, an unusual amount of your week listening to Supreme Court live streams like this is not like a normal thing you spend most of your time doing. The court is definitely Sunday before a group project mode right now. Yeah. So, OK, so it was this was the porn trial. Can you explain what's going on here? All right. So this is the trial called Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. And the idea is that Texas passed this law that's very similar to a lot of other state laws that says that if a site has more than a third adult content, then it needs to age gate its platform in a way that is more rigorous than like clicking a box that says I'm 18.

59:56And in Texas's case, It also has to put up these warnings that porn destroys your health, which is not scientifically proven that causes addiction and harms minors and all that. That's just a thing you can say if you want to, I guess. Sure. So this was then taken up to the court. A district court blocked it, said, look, there are all kinds of problems with making people hand over identifying information before they go and look at sensitive content, especially during a period where Texas is, say, cracking down on LGBT people. And then the Fifth Circuit, which is where law goes to die, said, no, this is fine.

1:00:35We're going to apply just the lowest standard for considering speech. Not literally the lowest standard, but an unusually low standard for considering whether this is going to chill speech, which means, OK, we're good. Let this happen. It happened. And then after that, it has gone to the Supreme Court. It was argued yesterday. It is probably not even remotely close to over. But we got a pretty broad section of questions about it. So what is the free speech argument here? I think age verification is the kind of thing that has come up a bunch of different times in a bunch of different, you know, cases around the legal world recently.

1:01:13But why is this a free speech debate at all? So this has come up a few times. It has primarily during the late 90s and early aughts, which is that if you put a burden on people to access something that is speech related, that burden has to have a compelling interest. And it has to be sort of the thing that's really the best solution, that there can't be a sort of more narrow, less onerous system. And a lot of the argument for making age verification unconstitutional is, first of all, it's just a barrier to access speech for children and adults alike. It adds this process to get to something that is legal and that is protected by the First Amendment.

1:01:59The other issue is there really has never been an age verification system that is both rigorous enough that it's not trivial to circumvent and not producing something that creates a pretty significant security and privacy risk. I feel like the one end of that spectrum is like the things on the alcohol web pages where they're just like, enter your birthday and you just enter like, I was born in 1931 and it's like terrific and lets you in. It's like we have we have satisfied something here, but we're not actually accomplishing anything all the way to the flip side of like, you can make these things very secure.

1:02:34But then they cause all kinds of other problems. Right. The sort of worst case scenario is you put your government issued ID into a system and it permanently links you with something that you don't want people to see. A list of all the porn you watch, you mean? And then everything gets hacked. And then the exact details of your viewing of adult video is out there for everyone to see. This is not how most age verification systems work at this point. They have added in more safeguards, but we still don't have a really great solution. And anyway, back to 20 years ago, the thing they determined at that point was the internet as it stands then, you have the better option of content filtering, that it is possible for you to prevent children from accessing porn on your computer by putting a filter on it.

1:03:25And that means we are not going to go this extra higher step of burdening everybody, including adults, with a system that creates privacy and security risks. and now it's been 20 years and we're considering this again. So is the question now, does that still work? Like, is that still the right approach, the content filtering thing? Like, is that again the question? Is that a better way? The question before the Supreme Court at this point was actually, what standard do you apply to evaluate whether this chills speech, which is known as scrutiny? It's one of those where they're like, we're not even arguing the case.

1:03:59We're just arguing the case about the case. And it's just like, we're just going to lawyer it all the way down. It's kind of a little bit in between, which is that, yeah, that's the question is whether we send this back and say you have to decide this based on a different standard. But there were also a lot of questions that were about the broader issue of, all right, well, has the Internet changed? Has age verification changed? Is there a compelling enough interest in protecting children from adult content that we should reconsider this? It was a hearing that I think doesn't necessarily provide a clear picture of what's going to happen next.

1:04:36Well, that sounds like every tech-related hearing anyone has had in the last several years. So I'm glad we're making a lot of progress in just kind of arguing around the edges without actually talking about the real things going on for people. With the exception of TikTok, which after that, everyone was like, oh, TikTok, TikTok is screwed. That's fair. That is very fair. So you actually make the case that these two cases are somewhat connected to each other. that you can kind of draw a line between the Pornhub hearing and the TikTok hearing. Can you explain the connection there? I think this is not necessarily the biggest issue in either of these.

1:05:08But in both cases, what you're doing is pitting two government interests against each other. In TikTok, you've got there is this national security risk. The Chinese government could harvest everybody's data or push covert propaganda. And we're going to pit this against the speech rights of a company that operates in the United States and a bunch of people who are using that platform for speech. So it's national security versus speech. Then in FSC v. Paxton, you've got this issue of, all right, there is a compelling state interest in protecting minors. If you run a store, you can't sell Playboy to a minor in like a brick and mortar outlet.

1:05:51Okay, we're going to try to apply the same thing to the internet because there is just such a clear risk for minors accessing adult content. And we're going to weigh that against everybody else's rights. As we've talked about so many times in this show, we're at a moment politically where it feels like if you want to get any kind of broad agreement about technology, you have to either yell about children or yell about China. And it's very funny that we are just kind of simultaneously doing both of those things in the Supreme Court right now. It just feels like we've hit a nexus of something. Children and national security are, yeah, clear the classic we're going to change speech law.

1:06:28I think we're also just at a moment where the First Amendment has just produced a lot of side effects that make everybody mad. And a lot of them are legitimately really frustrating. And so there's this sort of if the law you made led you here, what use is the law idea going around? Right. And yeah, and it is I mean, and you've you've written about this a few times that the question underneath all of it is like, how important is the First Amendment? Right. And it's like, are we are we ready to start tearing it down piece by piece in order to solve some of these other problems? Or is the First Amendment worth these other problems?

1:07:03And we're looking at Europe right now, which is passing a bunch of tech regulation and obviously has a different speech framework. And there are things there that I think that I would say have not worked out great. But we're also looking at this and saying the Internet could be different. And I think there are people for whom that's appealing. Fair. So I think we have a pretty clear sense of how the Supreme Court was leaning with the TikTok stuff. We're still infuriatingly waiting on them to issue some actual information. But I feel like everybody came out of that hearing pretty aligned on where it seemed like the winds were blowing.

1:07:35What's your sense with the Pornhub stuff? I really don't know. We talked to several people and they were like, we really don't necessarily know. I do think that so one of the things that came out of this was this quote everybody kind of dunked on, which was that Justice Alito says, all right, so one of the covered companies here is Pornhub, right? Or one of the covered platforms. All right. So if you go on Pornhub, do you have essays on there? Do you have the equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.? And everyone was like, Alito, what are you doing? Do you have any idea how Pornhub works?

1:08:08And I think that was actually I think that's the wrong rate of it. I think that maybe I am wrong on this, but I don't think really for a minute that he genuinely thinks this thing is. Has a bunch of intellectual value, and I think there was just this really running through line of we are going to prove that anything that is porn on the Internet is worthless and that it should not have speech protections. It is obviously just harmful, harmful to kids. You're making this argument that it's going to hurt sexual health sites or educational content or things that are artistic. And no, we're saying, no, it doesn't have Gore Vidal.

1:08:44I read Pornhub for the articles is really it's like that was your you put that in one of the stories. And it is the best sentence that has been on The First.com this week. I was very proud of that moment. And there is they the lawyer did raise the point that there is like sexual health content. And there is, funnily enough, a woman whose deal is that she just does video essays and, like, teaches things and makes money off it. Apparently the rev share on Pornhub is very good. Yeah. The economics. Maybe that's where TikTok will go. Go do that. Pornhub.com slash TikTok. Make it happen. This could do it.

1:09:16Richard, what do you think about Pornhub? Just in general. What are your thoughts? I'm going to talk about free speech. An app that you can use where you can see what it's like without the First Amendment. It's called Xiaohu Shu. You should try it out. A lot of people on there who can talk to you about the Constitution and why they don't use it. Yeah, say hello to your Chinese spy while you're there. All right, we got to take one more break. Addy, thank you for joining us. Richard, we're going to come back and we're going to blow through some news because holy God, is there a lot going on this week.

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1:11:16Alright, we're back. There's more policy stuff. let me just read you some headlines Joe Biden signs executive orders speed AI data center reconstruction US finalizes rule to effectively ban Chinese vehicles FTC sues John Deere which is not a sentence I expected to read this week there's some DJI stuff and controversy going on I don't want to talk about policy and politics anymore there's a lot of this to come for the next few weeks Richard do you care about any of that at this moment or can we just move on to more fun gadgety things Remember drones? Just saying. Remember drones? Remember drones?

1:11:51I feel the same way about drones and 3D printers where like for years, everybody was like, everybody's going to have one of these. And it's like, probably not though. Seems unlikely. I was at CES and there were a bunch of people who were like, it's time for the second coming of the at-home 3D printer for mainstream users. And I was like, okay. Best of luck with that, friends. And the thing they were showing off was like six feet tall and like$4 ,000. And I was like, I don't think this is the one, y 'all. But anyway, all right, let's talk about Sonos. Because I actually think in the gadget world, this was probably the biggest and both most surprising and most unsurprising thing that happened this week.

1:12:28What happened this week, Richard? Their CEO stepped down and some other executives left. Full house cleaning at Sonos, basically. Yeah. It turns out that releasing an app update that doesn't work when your whole thing is giving people a system that works when they want it to work is bad and means that a lot of the leaders of your company have to leave. Yeah. So, OK, so Patrick Spence, the CEO, is out. Tom Conrad, who is, I would argue, one of the most sort of quietly fascinating people in tech. He has just been like at every weird inflection point in the tech industry over the years. Can I just quickly read you a list of some of the places that Tom Conrad has worked over the years?

1:13:07Hit me. He was at Pandora for 10 years in the middle of like the crazy online music revolution. He was the VP of product at Snapchat. He was the chief product officer at Quibi for all of Quibi's life. Yeah, Quibi, everybody's favorite number one streaming service. And now was the director of the board at Sonos for a while and is now the interim CEO. But according to like the memos we've seen and the changes that are being made, sure seems like he is not acting like an interim CEO. So Tom Conrad, just like guy around the tech industry when weird things are happening. Very interesting. Real Jeff Teague of tech execs.

1:13:46It's exactly right. Who knows if he's as good a podcaster as Jeff Teague, though? Tom Conrad, if you ever want to come on the Vergecast and tell war stories about your time in the NBA, let us know. We're ready. But yeah, so the chief product officer also leaving, I think the chief commercial officer, I believe was her title, also leaving the company. Big, huge changes at Sonos. Uh, this feels both like maybe the right thing given what has happened to Sonos, but also like not a good sign that this company is like, it's one thing to say we made a mistake. I think it's, it's pretty obvious now that Sonos got kind of way out over its skis.

1:14:24They were like, we need new things to do and new ways to make money as a public company. So they decided to make headphones and they were like, we're going to get into the TV space and had all these big ideas about expansions when actually what they should have done is just kept making really good speakers that people liked. and you can see how the next thing to do is kind of retrench. But I think in many cases you can do that without turning over all of the leadership of your company. This just seems like not a great sign for what is happening and what is maybe to come from Sonos at this point.

1:14:58It feels like it usually doesn't work out well. But yeah, so they had to get those headphones out, just had to release these Sonos Acer headphones. So they kind of had to change all of their technology. And I mean, as I understand, I'm one of the few people I think who doesn't own a Sonos system, but it's always seemed like Sonos sells multi-room audio that costs a little too much, but it works. Yeah. Is that? I think that's exactly right. And for years, it was the only thing like it, that it was like, it was too expensive probably by, I don't know, 40 or 50%, right? It was like, you could get a speaker that sounded just as good for somewhere in the range of half the price.

1:15:32but then if you wanted a bunch of them and you wanted it to make sense and work with the apps that you used there just wasn't anything like it and then google started building a system like it and then they got into that whole lawsuit about it and you know amazon's audio systems got better and then you you can just like cast audio around and like bluetooth speakers work fine and so we're we're at a point now where the idea of sonos's basic thing i think is a little less special than it once was, but still, until this app fiasco, Sonos was still better at this than everybody else. And it feels like over the last 12 months, in order to ship headphones that I never, ever hear anyone talk about and have never once seen in the wild, just burned all of its goodwill.

1:16:18And I think I'm at the point now where I wouldn't consider Sonos to be the thing that just works. Even though my Sonos system still works great. I have zero problems with it. I never use the Sonos app, which is, I think, part of it. But like, we're sort of at a point both where with all this product stuff and now with all of this change, it's like Sonos feels unstable, like existentially in a way that I think is sometimes very hard to come back from. I think that the takeaway that I'm getting from this is that that reputation is something that's worth a lot to people, that that's what people were paying for, is that they knew Sonos was the one that they could buy and it would probably work pretty well.

1:16:55And if it didn't work, you know, you could probably get somebody to make it work for you. and some of these other tech companies yeah i mean okay so google's getting into multi-room audio apple is sort of in in speakers but neither of them are very serious about it it's just a side business for them for sonos it's their business they care they want to make it they want to make the experience good for you but then they it was the one thing it was the one thing that they had that their competitors really couldn't buy even with all of their tech billions and they seem to squandering it. Yeah, I completely agree.

1:17:25And I think it's maybe not impossible to get it back, but it's going to take a lot of work. And there are a lot of longtime Sonos users. One of the things that Sonos had going for it, the company's greatest problem was nobody needed to upgrade their Sonos stuff because it was so good. And I think there are a lot of people now who are feeling pretty burned by that relationship and getting that back is going to be a real challenge. Anyway, this is a lightning round, as you can tell already. We're going very quickly to this. Let's see a few more. We got some information about the supposed slim iPhone 17, which might be called the iPhone 17 Air.

1:18:05Richard, I hate this. I hate it. That's it. That's all I have to tell you. Speaking of companies that are very successful and need to build a new product for some reason to sell something else, here comes a slim iPhone that you didn't ask for. I think some of the rumors have been that this could replace the Plus model that was big, but still with the lower specs. So I think based on the rumors that we've heard is that this is something that would have a design that looks a lot different than the regular iPhones and iPhone Pros. It maybe wouldn't have quite as high of the specs as the Pro, but it would probably be more expensive.

1:18:41It'll be very slim. When you take it out of your pocket and you're somewhere, people will know you've got the iPhone Air, if that's the name. It's something that they can do. It's something new. And I think that's a real issue for Apple and for really these other companies and also Samsung, who is rumored to be about to debut a slim phone as well. Because, of course, if Apple has one, so will Samsung. How do you sell an iPhone when everyone has an iPhone? And the iPhone that they have is pretty good. But Apple intelligence does not seem to move the needle on that. No. What do you do next? And the answers maybe make one that looks a lot different so that people can say, I have the new one.

1:19:20So I agree with that. And I think the Mark Gurman first reported this for Bloomberg. And the thing that he said is this is a step in the direction of doing foldables, right? You basically take two thin ones and fold it. And that's how you get a foldable iPhone and iPad that works. That I find compelling. Sure. I think if you were to make a list of how do you make the iPhone better? I honestly believe make it thinner is like not in the top 25. Like no one thinks their iPhone is too thick and everybody puts their iPhone in a case. So you're going to take your slim iPhone. You're going to put it in a case that is going to make it a thicker and be not show off the supposed sexiness, slimness of the thing.

1:20:02It just doesn't make any sense to me. Like this just feels like it's purely a thing you're doing because you can. And that's fine. Like if, if Apple was like, look, we made the iPhone 17. It's thinner than ever before. I'd be like, neat, thinner than before. But to, to take this out of the lineup and brand it as its own new thing, I just think is absurd. Like I don't care. And my real issue is this, this portends a future in which the iPhone air pro max is a thing that exists and I cannot, I can't do it. If that phone exists, I'm switching to Android just on principle. I will not, I will not live in a world where the iPhone air pro max exists.

1:20:46And we've heard it at every single iPhone reveal event that they've ever had. Um, whenever they reveal one, whenever they release one, they always say that it's thinner. Maybe it's a little thinner, maybe it's a lot thinner. And there are a certain number of people who say, I just want an iPhone that lasts two days on the charge. I don't want the iPhone air. I just want the iPhone two days. I don't have to plug it in for two days. Make all the other parts smaller, make the battery bigger, change nothing else. And you will, you will like, you want an upgrade super cycle. I honestly believe that's how you get it.

1:21:14Like everyone with an iPhone that is older than let's say two models would upgrade to that. It feels like, oh, you'll go from your battery lasting until 4 PM to three days. Like, boom, that's, that's the upgrade. That's the thing. Like on the third day, like you get through the two days, you go to sleep, you wake up and it still has charge yeah like at at work on day three is when you charge your phone like sold that's that's the thing and for some reason phone companies refuse to test this theory it drives me nuts they just won't do it no they're just like it has to be thinner i'm like it doesn't it just doesn't like my phone is thin enough i i'm i'm so sure of that fact and if you make it thinner people just put bigger cases on it because they'll think it's more fragile and so they'll they'll go buy otter boxes for it and will be nowhere this drives me absolutely insane the problem is that apple is actually owned by big otter box it's a great conspiracy that's what's going on here we're gonna cover it's like it's like the big short but phone cases i've never actually seen the big short it's the mortgage-backed securities of the tech industry is just phone cases 200 phone cases that don't do anything it's actually not the worst metaphor uh but i can't we can't even do that uh there's some tubi news this week i know you love tubi news richard one thing people always say to me is richard seems like a tubi guy uh never once used it but i like it well i think there's a decent chance you're going to in a few weeks for the first time uh because the news this week was that super bowl 59 it's 59 this year right uh is going to be streaming for free on tubi which i actually think it's a pretty big deal because tubi is a free streaming service that doesn't even require you to have an account.

1:22:57Like it's one of the fast channel ones. And its whole thing is it's a big sort of scale-based, advertising-based platform. So you can just like Google a show and click on it on Google and start watching the show. And I noticed that happens a surprising amount with things that I want to watch. It turns out they're on Tubi. They're like, yeah, you can watch it for free right now. Oh, thanks. Tubi's library, if you think kind of like B-list shows and below Tubi has as good a library as anybody and especially like if you really love like three generations ago like the shows our parents grew up watching are like all over Tubi.

1:23:34They're there the ones that you think are nowhere turns out they have them. There was this movie that I saw the other day Baby Assassins. It's on Tubi it's a great Japanese movie if you love action good. I did not watch it on Tubi but it is there. Totally and I should say I actually I got one thing wrong uh you will need an account to watch the super bowl on tubi i just i just caught this looking this up right now uh which is very interesting because part of tubi's whole thing is that you don't need an account and uh we talked about this a little bit uh in a thing we're doing on the verge cast on tuesday about venue but fox which owns tubi doesn't have a like premium streaming service of its own and one very compelling thing to do when you have the super bowl is try and use it to get people to sign up for your streaming service because it is the Super Bowl.

1:24:21And that's a very good thing to do. So Fox doesn't have that move. There's no like Fox Plus that they can try to get you to pay 10 bucks for and then forget about and keep doing like Comcast can do with NBC and Peacock or CBS can do with Paramount Plus. So Tubi is the move, but they can't charge you for Tubi. So this is clearly just a like, they're making a big play just to get people into this ecosystem, which is really interesting. But the last time Fox had the Super Bowl, they ran an ad where 2B took over the stream and people it like ripped over the screen and made it seem like you were watching 2B instead of watching the Super Bowl oh that's right that's the one where like the interface came up right and everybody was like what is suddenly controlling my smart tv yes such a good idea so they really are using this to promote 2B and it's it's there of course you could use an antenna which you have I'm sure I'm sure you do I'm sure everyone has an antenna to watch free TV.

1:25:13But if you don't, then there's 2B. Yeah. A, antennas are great. I didn't get one for a very long time because I was like, this is probably complicated. Turns out it's not. You can buy it on Amazon and set it up in like a minute and a half and it's a super good idea and it works way better than you think. It's very ugly and you have to stick it to your window most of the time, but works super well. But also, yeah, I think it's going to be really interesting to see how 2B does with this because I'm willing to bet that 2B, a service that is not necessarily known for having like destination appointment viewing is going to have some traffic spikes that it has never really reckoned with before and during that during the Super Bowl is a bold strategy so we'll see alright couple more that we should get to explain to me what's going on with Drake I have I confess to you I have avoided following this thing because it's just a bunch of shenanigans but there were new shenanigans this week.

1:26:09What is Drake doing now? So you may have heard that Kendrick Lamar made a song about Drake last year in which he accused him of some things that you probably don't want to be accused of. Kendrick Lamar won the beef, right? Like we all agree that they were beefing and Kendrick Lamar sort of resoundingly defeated Drake. Well, Kendrick Lamar had a free concert in LA where he was dancing on stage with NBA players as they all called Drake a pedophile. So yeah, I think so. I think that is what winning looks like. Yeah, by most definitions. Yeah. But Drake and Kendrick Lamar are all on the same label, Universal Music Group.

1:26:45And Drake has turned his ire toward the label, Spotify to some extent, and others. And so he had filed this legal petition a couple of months ago, kind of looking for information, saying and accusing the label of certain things that they were doing illegal things to promote the Not Like Us song by Kendrick. payola to DJs and people to put it on playlists, using bots to drive up the view numbers on YouTube and the streaming numbers on Spotify. And so now he pulled one legal petition that was against UMG and Spotify and filed a federal lawsuit against UMG saying that the song is defamatory, number one, that it's not true, the accusations in it are not true, and that Universal knows they're not true because otherwise they wouldn't be in business with him or they could have just called him and asked him if they were true, which he would say that they are not.

1:27:35That's quite a phone call. Like, hey, Kendrick's about to put out a song. We have some questions for you. And accusing them of doing all these things to promote it, claiming that this was done to kind of affect their negotiations with him on his record deal and to affect negotiations with Kendrick on his record deal, and that they would have all of these things. But now, yeah, there is a lawsuit in federal court over a rap beef saying that the song is defamatory, which if you make a diss track about someone it probably is defamatory. If it isn't, you did it wrong um but you know legally i don't know what what that means for the future of this lawsuit but i find it interesting that he's not it's not like he's suing kendrick or anything he's suing specifically universal claiming that they did all of these these uh things that would be probably illegal to promote the track also things that people believe uh labels do to promote songs yeah the idea of like using bots to juice plays and payola and all that stuff is like those are the kinds of things that are kind of open secrets in a lot of parts of the music industry i i have no evidence on this particular one or umg or whatever but like it is a thing that happens and every people talk about it pretty openly as a thing that happens and that is that is uh what drake's lawsuit says so i guess we're kind of going to see where that goes um but curiously you know he's not suing spotify or iheart radio who had been named in the previous uh kind of uh things that he put out or at least not yet this is this lawsuit is just against his like interesting who he is still signed to i i would i would ask you if this was like a streisand effect thing where all he was doing was making it bigger but i feel like not like us does not need yeah that song that song has platformed itself pretty successfully i would say um all right one more and then we're gonna get out of here uh blue origin which is jeff bezos's rocket company uh It successfully launched New Glenn, its big rocket.

1:29:28I think that was on, was that today, Thursday? That was today. That was Thursday morning. Super early this morning. It's been delayed a bit. It was 2 o 'clock in the morning. Yeah. Monday morning was the first attempt, but it has now launched and parts of it went into orbit. This seems like a big deal, right? For a couple of reasons. One, because this company has had a lot of money and a lot of, I would say, almosts and kind of falsish starts over the years. They've been at this for like a decade. But then also because if this continues, Blue Origin becomes real competition to SpaceX for kind of the first time.

1:30:06Like SpaceX is still pretty far ahead in all of this and has been doing this for a very long time and is very good at this. But the idea of just there being another company meaningfully in this race seems pretty interesting to me. Particularly as they're trying to do the reusable rocket thing that SpaceX does and that others don't yet. Even the ESA just started launching a new rocket, but it doesn't have the reusable boosters and stuff like that, because that really helps you get the price down on the launches, which is key to SpaceX's business model. And right now, for all of these companies, and there are a lot of companies that are interested in launching stuff into orbit, SpaceX Starlink being one of them, but also many others, including Jeff Bezos, his own Amazon, and the Kuiper internet satellite constellation that they're trying to build.

1:30:50you need to be able to launch stuff a lot and to get it up there and having reusable rockets that work is a big part of it doing work that they want to do for nasa is a big part of having these reusable rockets going to the moon as elon musk says that he wants to go to mars if you can get there but you you got to have it and they have had so many delays i think this was supposed to be launched in 2020 but now it has launched it uh mostly worked they didn't get the rocket return but I think that was kind of a secondary goal. And so they're going to try that on future flights. Yeah, it again kind of illustrates how far behind they really are, but also how much progress they've made.

1:31:28I forget this occasionally, and it's nice to be reminded that just launching a rocket into space is very hard and kind of a big deal when you can do it from scratch. There's a lot more to do. The landing thing is hard. SpaceX is out here catching it with chopsticks. There's a lot of work left to do. to catch up to what SpaceX is up to. But this is this is a huge step. And I think the more I've talked to people in the kind of private space industry, the more the more I get the sense that there's a real kind of rising tide moment happening where a lot of people are leaving SpaceX who know how to do this stuff and they're starting new companies and there's more stuff being done and the technology is becoming more kind of commoditized and available.

1:32:10and like the acceleration of the competition in this space might start to happen pretty fast. In the same way that like Tesla had a commanding lead for a long time and then everybody kind of all at once, in part because of a lot of people who left Tesla, also learned how to make electric cars. That there's a real sense that the same thing is going to start to happen in the kind of private commercial space industry, which I think is very cool. Just as somebody who really likes watching two hour long launch videos, like the one that Blue Origin put out today, I would just like more of those. That's all I need.

1:32:41And it's all controlled by the same few tech billionaires slash oligarchs. Yeah, they all have the same plan. It's get a lot of money and then launch internet into space. Sure. It's fine. It is what it is. It's what I'd do. I mean, it kind of is, right? Like at some point you have so much money. What are you going to do except launch rockets? Or do the other Bezos thing, which is like, what if I made a clock that lasts forever? And like, perfect rich guy brain. Like that's it, Jeff. You did rich guy brain. Crushed it. Bill Gates is like, what if I cured all diseases? And Jeff Bezos is like, clock that goes always.

1:33:17All right, Jeff. Godspeed, my friend. All right, Richard, we have gone way over. It's time for us to go. Thank you for being here. This has been a delight. Neelai is no longer invited back to this show. He's off being fancy, and he can stay off being fancy, as far as I'm concerned. There's so much more to happen here. I'm so tired. It's middle of January. the TikTok ban may or may not happen on Sunday inauguration is on Monday there's all kinds of news and tech stuff I learned recently I live in DC and all the tech CEOs are here partying around the inauguration which is bizarre in ways that I'm not really prepared to reckon with a lot's happening we have a show on Tuesday that I will just tell everybody we have mostly already recorded because it's a holiday weekend so we want to give people some time off we'll have some updates we're going to talk a lot more about this next week and the week after and God help us forever and ever.

1:34:09But for now, Richard, thank you. Thank you as always. That's The Verge Cast. Rock and roll.

1:34:19And that's it for The Verge Cast this week. And hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11. The Verge Cast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Will Poore, Eric Gomez, and Brandon Kiefer. And that's it. We'll see you next week.

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