The Apple Car crash

25:27Like, Siri, show me a picture of my family. And it's like, which is? Sorry, I just keep looking at videos generated by Sora, by OpenAI. And I'm like, this shouldn't threaten anyone because all of these videos are slightly terrifying. Yeah. Did you see the one of the guys smoking? No. Where he, like, magics the cigarette up in his hand and it sort of, like, lights on fire. and then it brings it to his mouth. That's badass. It's very good. I love that. I just want to read this line from the Times piece, which, again, is full of just cutting asides, effectively. The story's really good. We'll put it in the show notes.

25:57Everyone should read it. But at the end of it, I'm just going to read it to you. Apple's dead car project will be survived by its underlying technologies. It's like, oh, now you're just writing an obituary. It's very good. It's loved by many in the community. No, this is the other cutting line. In interviews on Wednesday with the New York Times, people who worked on the project praised the decision to strutter it. That's bad. Brutal. That's bad. Yeah. It's a lot. I think it is fascinating to consider what if they built the other thing. It's fascinating to consider this decision in the context of deciding to launch the Vision Pro.

26:34Yeah. Which, by all accounts, I think some people have given it back. There are some reports on the return rates. But people know what it is now. No more mystery. No more hype balloon. it's a VR headset that some people really like and some people do not and they have a long way to go for that to become a mainstream project and it's like you decided to launch this thing that kind of doesn't work just to learn something about what you need to do and you never shipped one mid-sized crossover I actually don't think that's that complicated and we should move on from this the Apple car is going to loom large in my life forever so I'm sure we'll talk about it again but I think with the Vision Pro I see two big differences.

27:16One is that it's a thing Apple can just do, right? Like you can't just put a car on the road and see what happens. We've seen a bunch of that. It's gone real bad. And Apple, to its credit, not interested in playing that kind of game. But it's also a lower stakes thing for Apple to try to figure out in so many ways, right? It's an ecosystem Apple can control. It's a game it can sort of play on its own at its own pace, you don't have to be responsive to this gigantic car market that is moving in lots of directions all at the same time. I had the same thought that both of these things feel like unfinished experiments, and it's interesting that one launched and the other didn't.

27:58But it also seems like the experiment that is the Vision Pro is a lot easier to tolerate being a mess than a self-driving car. Fair. Fair. But I just think there's some part of Apple that's very different, right? That's like, well, let's see what happens, right? Like, that's not Apple. And I think with the Vision Pro, there's like a, there's a gap between how the company is talking about that product as though it is finished in the future and the reality of that product, which is as good as it gets. Yeah. Agreed. Right? Let's see what happens. Like the Apple Watch. Let's see where this needs to go versus the car, which is just 10 years of where it needs to go is away.

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32:27We're back. Lauren Feiner's here. Welcome, Lauren. Thanks. First time on The Verge cast? Yeah. Yeah, excited about it. Lauren is our brand new policy reporter here at The Verge. Very exciting because the policy news is off and running already in 2024 and its election year. So welcome. Thank you. No pressure. And when I say the policy news is already up and going, this week there was a very big Supreme Court hearing about two bills in Texas and Florida that purport to regulate how big platforms can do content moderation. The listeners are not going to be surprised to know that I think both of them are blatantly constitutional because they're government speech regulations at their core, and that's why they're in front of the Supreme Court.

33:09Tell us what's going on with that hearing, how it got there, where we are. Yeah, so these laws, each of them are a little bit different, but they're both essentially trying to get the tech platforms. Think of the major platforms, Meta, Google, YouTube, Twitter, or now X, to enforce their policies in ways that would be consistent or not discriminate by viewpoint between different users. So they're basically trying to tell the platforms what they have to host on their sites. And the genesis of both of them is like the worries about conservative censorship on social media, right? Is that where both of these came from?

33:53Yeah, exactly. I mean, they were enacted in 2021 after Donald Trump, notably, was kicked off of major platforms after January 6th. Okay, so it was literally a direct response to that. Yeah, pretty direct. But, you know, I think these censorship concerns have been existing in the Republican Party for a while. So I don't think that's necessarily the only thing, but definitely drove a lot more conversation around that. And this case seems like it was made to go to the Supreme Court. Oh, yeah. Right? Like this has kind of always been, you've been saying this sort of all along, like it was destined to be one of the ones.

34:28Not to get too into the procedural history here, but what you have is a law in Texas and a law in Florida. They're in different court systems, like they're in different circuits. So I think it was Texas got stayed in Florida got to go through and then the appeals courts disagreed and then that's how you get to the Supreme Court. So it's like a who's right about what this is like in this corner of the country. This bill is going through and in this corner of the country, the court saying it's unconstitutional. You've got a circuit split. You've got a First Amendment problem. Clarence Thomas, would you like a word like and he's been begging for this kind of case.

35:04He wants to be right now. Yeah. So that actually I think is the piece of the puzzle I think is the most important. These are conservative states with a conservative – governors, conservative attorney generals. They're mad that Donald Trump gets kicked off the platforms. And in response, they pass these laws that on their face are like, here are some rules we think the platforms should follow. And then in the details are like, and here's how we would like you to moderate Facebook. Right, right. Which is just, again, straightforwardly a government speech regulation, right? But it's conservatives making the government's speech regulation.

35:38So in the run-up to this, did anybody reckon with that? Because usually the conservatives don't like a regulation. It's my understanding of conservative principles. I mean, you've got a lot of really strange alliances or just seeing where people stand on this. Because even NetChoice has a lot of conservatives. NetChoice is the lobbying firm. Yeah, NetChoice is the trade association that represents pretty much all the major platforms. And they're the ones that have brought this to the Supreme Court, essentially. And, you know, they have conservatives high up in their organization and, you know, they feel strongly that this shouldn't be law.

36:17So I think where you see people netting out on this varies a lot. It's, you know, no longer something I think that we really see falling on like conservative or liberal. It's really based on, you know, other forms like is it more populist or is it more just like traditional conservative? that's one of the things that I just think is utterly fascinating about this is these platforms are really big they have the revenues of a country I think Facebook has more revenue by GDP than some countries Google definitely does these are just big rich companies that are global it's hard to think about who or how you could regulate them they don't have competition which is weird Someone from YouTube is going to like jump through the wall and be like, TikTok.

37:06But like not really, you know. And then in particular in the sort of Donald Trump moment, they all took the same action. And so it's like they're not even competing to have like – we have the platform with the most Donald Trump. Like they all took the same kind of action. And it's like who would regulate them? And it's just to me, it's particularly strange that you have conservative states who are like, we're going to just pass regulations about these platforms. And I think for most people that it's counterintuitive. But like you're saying, there's other ways of perceiving these laws, like far more populist.

37:42Obviously, like hating on big tech companies is very popular in Washington, D.C. Yeah. And I think you're actually seeing like another weird alignment on just like the competition question here, because we've seen some like more usually more liberal like competition groups saying like, hey, you know, we don't necessarily love these laws, but we're concerned about them being struck down. And then what that means for just never being able to regulate the tech companies. So I think you have like another weird alignment where you see like more liberal groups saying something like that and kind of taking the Republican AG side, even if they don't totally agree, But just being more fearful about what would happen if these laws are struck down and what would that mean for the future of tech regulation in general.

38:28There's been a lot of that over the last few years, I think, where there are some people who are like, I want regulation, but not this. And then others who are like, we can't overregulate, but we have to regulate. It's like, wait. Yeah, it's a lot. Everybody's trying to find this maybe impossible middle ground that everyone is convinced exists. And you had a great quote in the piece you wrote leading up to the hearing on Monday where they were basically like, I've never seen the regulation that does what I think needs to be done, but I'm still convinced that it exists or is possible. And I think we've now spent a long time trying to figure out if it's possible.

39:04And it doesn't necessarily seem like we're any closer to it than we were of like this nuanced, perfect thing that addresses the right things and not the wrong things. and a lot of what they talked about in this hearing was all the wrong things that this these bills might address if they're put into law and i don't know it just all feels like every time we try to do this in a small way it all becomes sort of the size of the universe because that's what happens on these platforms and everybody just kind of like runs and hides and no one knows who they're going to end up with at the end of it it's very strange yeah i think that's what you saw a lot of the justices struggling with on monday was just like where does the where does this end like Like if we strike down these laws, can we have no tech regulation then?

39:46And I think that's what concerned them about how these cases were brought to them is like, do we have to make like a huge sweeping statement on future regulation? Or can we like tailor this to certain companies or like certain forms of companies that are really engaged in like expression? What was the vibe of the hearing like? I think the Supreme Court justices have been pretty honest over the years about not being the greatest at understanding technology. I think it was Elena Kagan who said we're not the nine foremost experts on the internet not that long ago. I just want to point out that that's bad.

40:24It's like, you should try harder. Get Gen Z on the Supreme Court now. Let's go. You're nine unelected weirdos who get to decide everything about American life? Figure out how to use your phone, man. I agree. I'm with you. But there's still, and I think part of why we've seen the Supreme Court not take these huge stances yet is because of that. They seem sort of unwilling to make things, make big sweeping gestures. I just don't buy caveman lawyer. Like, figure it out, dude. Oh, sure. No. Listen, if we litigate, is the Supreme Court a good idea? How will we use our abundant power? Like, shut up.

41:01I don't know. You're there. You're there for life. All right. Sorry. But what was it like in the room, like actually kind of watching them ask these questions and try to figure this out in real time? What were the vibes like? Yeah. So I wasn't in the room directly. But just listening to the arguments, I think, and especially compared to last year when we had Gonzalez v. Google, which was a case about Section 230. Which the Supreme Court ended up pretty much just punting on. They're like, ah, we don't know. Yeah. And I think it was those arguments where Kagan said that quote that you said. And, you know, those arguments, you could tell they're really struggling with, like, how does the technology work and what are the implications?

41:37And so that was a question I had going in was, like, are we going to see the same thing this time? But what First Amendment experts I talked to before the hearing told me were basically like, you know, this is really a case about the First Amendment, whereas like that was Section 230. That was a little bit more in the weeds. This court, they know the First Amendment. They're pretty strong on the First Amendment. So, you know, I think there was a feeling that they would be on a little bit more stable ground there, just like knowing what they would be talking about or the sorts of questions they should be asking.

42:09And, yeah, it's about the technology and like how things work. But fundamentally, it's a First Amendment question about, you know, can you regulate businesses around speech? So I think we saw more of that confidence in this hearing compared to the Gonzalez arguments where, you know, you were more able to see like they're asking questions that get to the heart of the First Amendment. And yeah, so I think there was more of a sense that they knew what they were coming in here wanting to do. But at the same time, I think they were struggling with figuring out how they were going to rule on this because the cases came to them as facial challenges.

42:49meaning that NetChoice is basically asking for kind of an all or nothing ruling here. Like, can you just say like this category of law is bad as opposed to saying like, you know, we think that these laws as applied to these companies or these circumstances should not be allowed. And that would give them a little bit more flexibility. So I think what you saw was the justices kind of prodding at what are the outward bounds of what we could do here. And, you know, we heard them asking about Etsy and Uber. And it's like, what do these companies have to do with anything? But I think that's where you see them trying to figure out, like, is there a way to do this where we don't preclude any regulation of the tech companies?

43:37And, like, maybe we focus in on the companies that really are engaged in speech. What did Etsy and Uber have to do with anything? Yeah, I mean, I think basically they're saying like, you know, can this apply to like any tech company? Like, you know, Etsy has some speech in that, you know, you could leave comments on a seller, a seller's site or something like that. Or, you know, Uber, you can chat with the driver. I would just point out Etsy is one of the most dramatic websites in the entire like it is constant moderation. Oh, yeah. Like all the time. Casey Newton, a platformer, and Zoe reported out that in the middle of the Israel-Palestine war, Etsy is like moderating whether or not you can sell stuff that says from the river to the sea on it.

44:22That's a straight content moderation. Like should the government force a store to carry products it doesn't want to sell is like an open question. The justices being like, what about Etsy? is like, no, Etsy is full of user-generated content that the company moderates. Yeah. And it's like, of course this touches Etsy. And there was a moment in this hearing where there was some debate about what a website is, and I had the reaction, like, well, this is why The Verge exists. The Supreme Court is like, what is a website? I was like, well, here we go. Maybe it just comes Kool-Aid manning into the room.

44:57I was like, I'll tell you. Our publication was found at the inside that knowing what a website is will be very important to the future of the world. Here we are. And a lawyer for NetChoice was like, we can just set aside Gmail and these other problems you've raised because this law definitely covers websites. And I was like, Gmail is a website. Famously a website. That's how most people experience Gmail. and you just have this like really fine sort of philosophical delineation of things that all feel like the same thing and like the Supreme Court inventing these categories. And it felt to me like they wanted to find a category that was like, what if we just regulate Facebook?

45:42And I believe they kept calling them the classic social media networks as though that was like a well-defined. It's like in the antitrust thing where all of these fights end up being about market definition. It feels like with so much of this stuff, it's just how do you draw the boundaries around this thing that we can talk about Facebook and Reddit and X and a couple of other things without talking about any comment anyone leaves anywhere on the internet. And it just seems it's so leaky as you get down and it just gets murkier and murkier as you get bigger. And I think the question of like can the government tell Facebook how to moderate Facebook is again sort of on its face unconstitutional.

46:23Right. And by the way, Lauren said facial challenge. Literally that is what that refers to. Yeah. Like on its face is this law unconstitutional. Right. And it not as applied or like in this place the government uses law to do this thing that's bad. Which is the justices I think were kind of openly hoping that maybe they could just like kick it back to the court and like do some other stuff or the case would be brought in some other way based on some thing that had actually been done. As opposed to this big question of like speech regulations, good or bad, because they kind of want to be like sometimes good.

46:55Also, the court stopped these laws from going into effect so early on that there's not really a super developed record for the justices to look at or, you know, to see in the real world. Like, well, what sort of bad things happened under this law? What sort of good things happened? So, you know, I think some of them were grasping at like, OK, well, what do we even do with this? We don't really know how this will work out. We have some clips from the argument of various justices asking what I would call searching existential questions. This bookstore's one is interesting. It's Amy Coney Barrett.

47:25What's she trying to ask here? Yeah. So Amy Coney Barrett was basically trying to get at like our – if you're talking about how these platforms organize content, isn't that just a judgment? Like isn't all organization judgment? So that's what she was trying to get at here. And she was giving the example of a bookstore as kind of an analogy. So we can listen to what she said there. Yeah, it's from the clip. They have to present information to a consumer in some sort of organized way and that there's a limited enough amount of information that the consumer can absorb it. And don't all methods of organization reflect some kind of judgment?

48:05I mean, could you tell, could Florida enact a law telling bookstores that they have to put everything out by alphabetical order and that they can't organize or put some things closer to the front of the store that they think, you know, their customers will want to buy? So I just want to point out, it is very likely that the Ron DeSantis version of Florida passes a law. I was about to say the same thing. Like that is totally in character for 2024 Florida. And eventually they'll ban all books that start with D, like just for some reason. Yeah. Disney, get them out of here. By the way, DeSantis now on the record saying our don't say gay bill went too far because too many books are getting banned.

48:42It's like, well, that's what happens, dude. That's why we don't ban books in America. It's just a thing that happens. So that, to me, right, is if you have any kind of algorithmic, if you have a platform with tons and tons of content, you have any kind of algorithmic filtering. You have to have it. Otherwise, it will be a fire hose of everything. And that will make your platform unusable. And so the distinction there that I think I struggle with, everybody struggle with, is it makes sense to say you can't tell the bookstore owner how to organize the bookstore. When you get to an algorithm saying here's some stuff that we think you will engage with, is that like an editorial First Amendment decision?

49:23I think the argument some people make is like that's not. Like that should at least be transparent or we should at least give people some control over it. Or these companies are so powerful that the government does have some interest in being like, here's how those should work. But I don't know. Like it seems like when we talk about this realignment, you mentioned liberal antitrust people. That's Tim Wu who's been on the show. He's the one who's like, these are just algorithms. They're not like a newspaper. Regulate away. Where did the court come down on that? You know, I think we don't know yet where they fall on it.

49:59I think, you know, through that questioning, I think we could infer that Amy Coney Barrett is a little bit skeptical of how organization is different from speech itself, because she's saying, is an organization a judgment? And, you know, we saw Florida's solicitor general who was arguing this say, like, well, you know, the organization is really different here. and he later said, you know, this is, you know, we're not saying how platforms have to organize their content. But then in kind of the same breath is talking about how the law does talk about shadow banning, which is inherently organizing content.

50:40Right. Shadow banning is just taking the book and putting it all the way at the back of the bookstore. And importantly not telling the book. Right. Right. Well, and I think to your point, one of the things that it seems like is being talked about kind of underneath all of this is that it seems like what these bills want is for it to be a lot more work to ban somebody or remove content and that it should essentially have to be a person who presses the button and then fills out a form about why they press the button. And I think part of the outcome of that would very clearly be to make it harder to do that moderation just because you can't have an algorithm that just pulls stuff out.

51:15You essentially have to document every single time that happens. and also to make it so that it is more transparent but sort of more arduous in the name of being more transparent. So I think they want to make it look less like a series of algorithms that can make these kinds of decisions and more like literally people curating a bookstore. And then I think you're having a very different conversation about what all of this looks like. But that's just so far away from how these systems work now. And I think one of the things that the tech companies have argued, right, is that this thing you're arguing for where there has to be like a person in a room writing a paragraph about every single post that we take off of Facebook is like preposterous and impossible.

51:52Right. And so it just feels like I don't know. I don't know how to connect those ideas in my head that we're talking about algorithms. But we're also talking about a person who is like, let me tell you why I kicked your post off of Facebook. You were mean to everybody. Yeah. The transparency thing. I think they didn't get into as much in these arguments as the what are called the must carry provisions that platforms have to carry certain content. But I think that's definitely an important element of it, too. And I think, you know, you could see why someone would want to know if they're kicked off a platform, why that happened or, you know, why something's not being shown to their followers as much.

52:30But I think the tech companies would say, like, that's a huge, like, resource suck. And also maybe it's going to make it harder for newer entrants to do that because, you know, yeah, Facebook can tell everyone here's why you were kicked off our platform. But a newer platform is not really going to have the resources to do that. Right. Yeah. One of the arguments that has been made kind of around all of this is that any of these regulations just entrench the huge platforms that can afford to do this kind of moderation and take on the litigation risk and pay all the lawyers. Whereas if you want to start a new thing, good luck.

53:04You're going to get sued by everyone who doesn't like a post. But this is the alignment problem again. I don't want to say alignment problem because it's an AI phrase. This is the weird political like shuffle that's happening is like the conservatives are like, what if we had a bunch of regulated monopolies? So we'll have like four companies and they'll just like do what we say. And then a bunch of liberal academics who are like, we should have more competition. They're like, what if we also did some speech regulations? And it's like, what is happening? Do you hear yourselves? Yeah. Wait, what is going on here?

53:34Like, I don't. Who are you people? Did you all like literally wake up in the wrong house today? Like I don't understand what's going on. I think we heard a lot of echoes of that split on sort of the right flank of the court. And it's a 6-3 court. So it's like the whole court is a right flank right now. But you have far more conservative members on that majority and less conservative members. And Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are like, these are common carriers. They have to carry everything. Thomas kept on bringing up Section 230 over and over again because he hates it so much he was just sputtering and everyone's like that has nothing to do with this and then you heard Brett Kavanaugh say that to me you know, I'm old the funniest things that would get stated in the Slashdot forums when people would get banned on the Slashdot forums, you're censoring me and somebody's like, only the government can censor you, you don't have any First Amendment rights this is like old internet forum poster stuff so Alito is saying isn't content moderation just another word for censorship.

54:36And that's very Orwellian. Like we've like made this fake name for this horrible thing. And we have a clip of Kavanaugh arguing with Alito and saying, hold on, can we play that clip? I just want to follow up on Justice Alito's questions. And I think he asked a good, thought-provoking, important question and used the term Orwellian. When I think of Orwellian, I think of the state, not the private sector, not private individuals. Maybe people have different conceptions of Orwellian, but the state taking over media, like in some other countries. And in Tornillo, we made clear, the court made clear that we don't want to be that country.

55:16In Supreme Court parlance, that's such a sick burn. Maybe you have a different definition of Orwellian. It's stupid and wrong. Have you actually read George Orwell, sir? I think starting an insult with so-and-so asked a very good, thoughtful question is amazing. And it's your fellow Supreme Court justice. It fundamentally misunderstands everything about everything. So that's weird. That's on the right. And you can see that split between should we use some speech regulations? Should we dress them up? Or should we be the place with the First Amendment? Do you see that indicating how it might go?

55:57Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think that if you're seeing Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett asking these questions, I think you're probably going to see the liberal justices aligned in some way on those kinds of things. You know, I think maybe we'll still see Alito and Clarence Thomas out on their own. Clarence Thomas is going to issue a one page dissent that just says, fuck, section 230, sign Clarence. It's like in crayon. Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of it's a somewhat good sign for net choice that, you know, they're seeing these alignments. But at the same time, you know, from analysis I've seen after the arguments, I think, you know, net choices maybe not going to get as sweeping of a decision as they had hoped for.

56:49Because the justices were looking for like, you know, where can we regulate tech companies or where could we at least leave open the option that that could happen? And like, do we really have to rule in a way that says like any kind of law like this is like for sure unconstitutional? Yeah, this might be just a stupid procedural question, but is this the kind of thing where NetChoice can come in and say, we'd like a gigantic, sweeping, epic decision one way or the other? Like, this is the moment, gavel down on the internet. And the Supreme Court can say, like, no, but we are going to do this very tiny thing in the middle.

57:25Pretty much, exactly. That's what the Supreme Court loves to do. That's their favorite move. Okay. By far, like in the history of the Supreme Court. But I mean, in this case, especially like NetChoice is very loudly saying this is gigantic and the Supreme Court can be like, shut up. We're still going to do this to anything. They can still do that. Yeah. What ways do you think they could do that? Yeah. From what I've seen, it seems like they could probably just, you know, remand this to the lower courts and say, like, you need to develop a fuller record or, you know, just kind of give more guidance on, you know, how you should be deciding this.

57:55So, yeah, they can throw it back to the lower courts and just kind of – or carve out some middle path of how they want to decide this. Yeah. The justices did in the oral arguments ask the lawyers from both sides several times, how would you write this opinion? Just straight up. Like what would you do? Here's my laptop. You do it. Because it is such a fundamentally complicated thing. Right. In particular to state attorneys general, when you're like actually write the rule and enforce it, it's pretty easy to trip them up. And the justices were able to trip them up over and over again. For example, let me come back to noted forum poster Brett Kavanaugh.

58:33That man is definitely like a poster. You can feel it. Oh, yeah. There's a great Daily Beast headline that was like, God help us, Brett Kavanaugh might save the First Amendment. That's his vibe. Literally, he's reminding them that the First Amendment is about the government. Can we play that clip? In your opening remarks, you said the design of the First Amendment is to prevent suppression of speech, end quote. And you left out what I understand to be three key words in the First Amendment or to describe the First Amendment by the government. Do you agree by the government is what the First Amendment is targeting?

59:12I do agree with that, Your Honor, but I don't agree that there is no First Amendment interest in allowing the people's representatives to promote the free exchange of ideas. Another sick burn by Kavanaugh, though. Like seriously, as like Supreme Court shadiness goes, like he's tearing it up. Yeah, he's just like, what are you doing, man? And that's again, that's on the right. Like, I think you would expect these kinds of questions from the three liberal justices. they're not obviously as motivated by the banning of Donald Trump as some of the conservative justices. And then Kavanaugh is just like, hold up, like, by the government.

59:50Like, that's the thing, right? And this argument in response that he got, which is the people's representatives, like our lawmakers, have some – they should pass laws that allow for the free exchange of ideas is like kind of a new argument, right? The idea that we need government speech regulations so that Facebook doesn't suppress – that's a winding path of logic that I think is like a hard sell. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think it seems like no one has figured out how to do this in a clean way, how to pass speech laws for the internet that don't run afoul of the First Amendment but do get the sort of outcomes that people want on the internet.

1:00:34Yeah. So, I mean, I don't really know what the answer will be if there is a way to do that. Yeah. But this is such a new problem, right? I mean, I think they talked a lot about newspapers in this case. I think one of the one of the big open questions is, can you regulate Facebook like you would regulate a newspaper? And I don't know what the answer will be, but it seems like no for lots of reasons. But one of them is that, like, imagine if every single person on Earth got the same newspaper. Like maybe we would think about it differently. And that is fundamentally what something like Facebook is.

1:01:08And I guess this is where my favorite quote from the whole thing, was it Alito that asked how much YouTube would weigh if it was a newspaper? Oh, I forget who it was. I think it was Alito. I could be wrong. But one of them asked, if YouTube was a newspaper, how much would it weigh? Which is on its face a totally insane question, but actually kind of in context makes sense. Because the question is like, can we talk about these new things in the way that we talked about these old things? And I don't know. The answer, by the way, is 50 ,000 pounds. That's how much YouTube would weigh? The Washington Post literally has a headline.

1:01:39Here's a headline. Here's how much a YouTube newspaper would weigh, Justice Alito. That seems low. And they calculated it at 50 ,000 pounds. Seems low. One billion words of daily YouTube output. 50 ,000 pounds. That's the answer. I mean, fair enough. That's the answer, Justice Alito. It's a big newspaper. It's a long article. like it's very long okay but no but i think that's that's kind of been the central question of a lot of these things right is can we talk about these platforms in the way that we've talked about anything else before them and nobody seems to know the answer to that even like what is the precedent we're looking at here nobody quite knows yeah i i think that was kind of a question with the, you know, concept of editorial discretion and, you know, talking about a case that came before that looked at the Miami Herald and can they be compelled to print an op ed?

1:02:38And, you know, on the one hand, you could see the similarities to the Miami Herald and Facebook. On the other hand, you might think like, does what Facebook's doing? Is that really editorial discretion? There's so much information, like they're not really parsing through all of it. there's just certain things that are flagged or certain things they're looking at. But does that constitute having an editorial vision? Yeah. And I think we can confidently say that Facebook does not have an editorial vision. It's just people yelling at each other in neighborhoods and Facebook Marketplace. Yeah. But that's not what Facebook is there for, right?

1:03:14They all, at various points, have tried to do editorial things, and it mostly goes quite badly. We should wrap this up. We don't know what's going to happen. Then we're expecting an answer in June. Yeah, probably in June or before then. The one thing that didn't come up that I hope someone mentions to the Supreme Court justices is that there's actually quite a bit of competition. Like Donald Trump owns a social network. His reaction to being kicked off the platforms was to start his own platform. If you would like to hear from Donald Trump, his tweets are available to you. Right. And like there are – TikTok does exist.

1:03:55And for whatever our government currently wants to think about TikTok, it certainly exists right now. And that to me is like, well, if you want the platforms with looser rules, you can go get them. They're available to you. And that should be – to me it seems like that's the solution. And I think the thing that is probably frustrating to a bunch of folks is that to build a healthy business with happy customers, you usually have to ban the assholes. Like, that's just how it goes. Right. But I don't think YouTube is lacking for conservative voices. I don't think Facebook is lacking for conservative voices.

1:04:31But I but it doesn't seem like it seems like the it seems like our government at every level, the Supreme Court, Congress, whatever, all these hearings constantly forget that many other platforms exist. and sometimes they forget that anything but Twitter exists, right? They're like, ask Mark Zuckerberg about Twitter. Do you see any hint of like a more expansive scope? Is that why they were talking about Uber and Etsy so much or was that just confusion? I think that's a little bit different. But I think on the question of competition, you know, it makes me think about Ken Buck, the Republican representative who's actually on his way out of Congress.

1:05:06You know, he was a big champion of new antitrust laws for the tech companies. And he did think about it as like, you know what, I do care about censorship on the Internet, but I think the way to fix that is to have more competition on the Internet, to have more platforms. And so he dealt he looked at that question from the lens of competition. But, you know, notably, he's leaving Congress and, you know, his view isn't shared by maybe the majority of Republicans. I think there is a contingent that does feel like competition might be the answer. But there hasn't been enough brought on board to make these antitrust reforms be able to pass in the House or the Senate yet.

1:05:54So I think, you know, there is there are like seedlings of that thought, but I don't know how far that's gotten us yet. Yeah. I mean, it's why all of the stuff happening simultaneously with these cases and the antitrust cases is so interesting because they so directly speak to each other. Yeah. For exactly what you're talking about. Like the the antitrust cases are about the competition that would theoretically solve some of these problems. And by solving some of these problems in other ways with moderation and things like that, we're actually changing the way that the competitive landscape is going to look on the Internet.

1:06:25And so these things are just going to keep spinning around each other. It seems like for a long time until somebody plants some kind of regulatory or, you know, I don't know, legal flag. And then a lot of things are going to start to fall out. And what I wonder for you before we go is, does this feel like it has a chance to be the moment the Supreme Court sort of plants a flag in some way or another? I think Clarence Thomas in particular has been waiting for his chance for so long now to have strong, loud, aggressive feelings about this in official paperwork. And I think there was some indication that this had the chance to be a moment for the Supreme Court to really have a strong opinion where it has been so wishy-washy in other cases.

1:07:13Coming out of the hearing on Monday, do you have any sense, leaning one way or the other, about whether this is going to end up being kind of small or big? I think, you know, if they take some sort of middle route, I still think even that will be pretty significant because anything that says, you know, these kinds of tech platforms are allowed to decide what they carry on their platforms. That's a big deal to have that affirmed by the Supreme Court if that's what happens. And, you know, at the same time, if the court says, you know, we're going to deal with this little piece of it, but we're not going to deal with these other things.

1:07:46I think that's also a big deal because they're saying, hey, we could still regulate the platforms in these other ways, or we're at least leaving open the possibility that there's a constitutional law here that could be created. Yeah, that's fair. And we'll see that go up to the Supreme Court at some point, too, probably. But at least we'll have a better sense of what's in the realm of possibility or not. It does seem like we're due for one of these a year for the rest of our lives. She's Clarence Thomas being like, section 230. Get out of my face. He hates it so much. She's giving speeches about him and she hates it.

1:08:20Yeah. And it's actually like many things to Clarence Thomas. I'm clear why. It's not like a fully reasoned argument. All right. We'll be 30 extra minutes of dunking on Clarence Thomas in a bonus episode. That'll be coming up. Totally kidding. We got to take a break, but Lauren's going to stick around. We got a lightning round. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in.

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1:12:03We're back. 30 Minutes by Clary Toms. Here we go. Does anybody ever call him Clary Toms? Clary Toms. I think that's the last thing you do when you call him Clary Toms. Look, I am very proud to be American. I think one of the most American things you can do is make relentless fun of the Supreme Court. They're a bunch of weirdos. and they'll never see it because they don't know how to use their phones. It doesn't matter who they are, liberal, conservative. Just make fun of them. Just like, what are you nerds doing? It's great. That's my First Amendment right. I love that. Bring it, Clary. All right.

1:12:41Vote Patel. That's my whole platform. I will roast these nerds every day of my term as your president. It's beautiful. Vote Patel. The NAG platform. You should go listen to the audio of the hearing. It's good. It's important. I just think it's funny to make fun of nerds. Okay. Cut that part out. All right. Lightning round. There's actually a lot in this lightning round. Lauren, you're our guest. Do you want to go first? Sure. Yeah. So I chose the story about Google CEO saying that the Gemini AI diversity mishap was completely unacceptable. So I thought this was an interesting story because it's basically, if you hadn't seen, Google's Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis, which is kind of offensive for strange reasons.

1:13:38I just want to say we talked about this on last week's show for like 45 minutes, and that is such a better summation than anything else we do, which is strange for various reasons. It's so good. I will say, it's also, it's okay to point out, it is hilarious. Oh, yeah. It is the funniest shit in the entire world. The fact that it happened is funny. The response was funny. The fact that it went all the way up to Sundar Pichai having to send a long internal memo about it is funny. The fact that Ben Thompson sent out a newsletter that's like, Sundar should be fired because of the black pope that he made.

1:14:12It's like, dude, everybody just like, just turn the knobs down. All of it's funny. Some very smart people. being the dumbest. Anyway, carry on. Yeah, I mean, I think it's an amusing way that this happened. It also could have happened in a way less amusing way. So I think we're fortunate that it's something that's funny to talk about. But I think Sundar Pichai is clearly seeing this as like, you know, this could have been way worse. And like, we can't keep having these errors. And it just reminds me how like, you know, OpenAI releasing ChatGPT when it did just like spurred all of these companies racing to put out their own competitors.

1:14:53And here we are with this kind of, I don't know, maybe this was a product of being rushed and having something really strange and uncomfortable happening as a result. And maybe this is some kind of reset for Google thinking. Do you remember that phase where Mark Zuckerberg was just reflexively apologizing for everything? There was like a two-year phase where anytime anything happened on the internet, But Zuck would do a video in which he very earnestly apologized. That, to me, feels like the Sundar Pichai era we're heading into right now. He's just like, whatever is happening, I'm so sorry. We're doing our best.

1:15:29I don't understand how we got here or what weird thing we put into Gemini to make it do this. But I'm so sorry. They know. And we'll do better. They were like, robot, be less racist. Yeah. And the robot was like, so not racist that we're racist again. That's what we're doing. I mean, this is to me, every part of this is funny. So, right, like Google famously did not release its chat bots because they were afraid of bad outcomes and misalignment and bad things happening. OpenAI, as you point out, released it. Google gets kicked in the butt. They start releasing things left and right. And then you have an entire movement of people called effective accelerationists who are like, no rules.

1:16:08Like, all the AI we can't. Like, do it. And they're the people who are like, Google went too fast here. Their AI is too woke. And it's like, this is the thing you want. The thing you want is to just put it out. But not with so many black people. And it's like, you guys should shut up. Like, you should stop saying what you're saying. It's very revealing. Because the problem with the other AI is it only made white people, and you were cool with that. And now it's like, well, we. Because progress or something. Now you're like, the AI that only makes black people is like bad. It's like, you should shut up.

1:16:42You should point out to Google that a racially diverse picture of Nazis is very funny and probably not the intended outcome. And then you should stop talking about how mad you are about it. I just think you should be quiet. And also no one is out here with any actual good ideas about what is supposed to happen in any of these cases. They're like, I want it to be perfectly historically accurate and also help me dream up new things and create things that no human could ever come up with. And it's like, well, what? Yeah. It kind of just makes you think like, OK, maybe this is a really human thing.

1:17:16Like, how do you program like we want diversity, but not in like historically accurate depictions of Nazis. Do you think there's a whiteboard at Google that's just like labeled the Hamilton conundrum? It's like, should Lin-Manuel Miranda be able to use Chad Manu to make Hamilton too? Do you remember that drill tweet from a million years ago where he's like turning a huge dial that says racism and looking at the crowd like I'm a contestant on the prizes, right? That's what Sutton Arpichai is doing. It's very good. That's where we are. Truly every part of this is funny. I can't get it. And I just, I beg you, if you're like, what I'm mad about is the computer-made drawings of black people.

1:17:58Just shut up. It'll go better for you over time. Well, and also to your point about Google being forced to catch up on all of this stuff, you've got to assume Sundar Pajai is also sitting in meetings going, this is why we did this slowly, you idiots. Google has had this technology forever. And Google loves to remind you that, oh, what's the T in GPT? We did that. That's a Google thing that we did. It's Transformers. We made them. and Google was taking it very slowly and then OpenAI just like YOLO'd its way onto the internet and now here we are and so like Mark Zuckerberg made the heel turn to being like I don't care I just make glasses now like Sundar's next move is just to be like yeah morons this is what you wanted welcome to the world you asked for it might be amazing it might be the best move Sundar ever did here's what you wanted morons totally out of character I can't even imagine him saying the word morons.

1:18:56I'm going to go get an AI voice cloner. It'll just be soon to are issuing devastating burns to people. He's a very polite man. We're working to get him on Decoder, and I hope that we didn't just kill that. We'll see what happens. That whole episode of Decoder will be like, will you say the word morons? Just get him to say each phoneme, and then we can put it together, and he'll say it. Okay, I've got a lightning round. I forgot to mention the lightning round is sponsored this week. Oh, yeah. But not for money because no one is that dumb. If you would like to pay us money, this is the only time I will say the name of a sponsor.

1:19:31I will sell my integrity if you sponsor the lightning round for money. But we're not. We didn't take money this week. We took an excellent, hilarious tip from our friend Christopher, who is this week's sponsored lightning round, who said, how did you miss this smeg news? Which is an incredible sentence. My Smeg Google Alert is really letting me down. If you recall, Smeg is a maker of quirky refrigerators. You know, the retro refrigerator company. Yes, you do. Yeah. They have a collaboration with Fiat. They've made a Fiat 500 with a refrigerator. What? That's true. It's the Smeg 500. On the Smeg website, here's the first line.

1:20:19What is a fridge doing underneath the bonnet of a Fiat 500? Smeg and Fiat merge, form, and function to create an extraordinary item for the Fiat 500 design collection because the refrigerator is not just an electrical appliance and a bonnet is not just a car part. Hell yeah. This seems like an April Fool's joke. Then there's a picture of a Fiat 500 and it says an iconic place for food with an arrow pointing to the trunk of the car. This is all true. I would like to make t-shirts that have just on the stomach the phrase an iconic place for food These two made in Italy brands already met in 1950s.

1:20:56It's like a meet cute Oh, they've been trying to get the smeg 500 sounds like like the last NASCAR race you've that ever happens Yeah, you win a fridge at the end for me Vittorio that this keeps going by the way There's a lot here Thank you, Christopher, again, for sponsoring the round with this link. CEO of Smeg, Vittorio Bertazzani, he said, For me, creating the Smeg 500 was above all a matter of personal honor. Seriously? That's a quote. This is about my family's legacy.

1:21:35Wait. You're not. You said that as a joke. That is the rest of the quote. Are you serious? I strongly. I strongly believe in this project that pays tribute to the memory of my grandfather when he founded Smeg after the Second World War. One of his first collaborations was creating refrigerators with Fiat. Incredible. It's just the whole whatever. We'll link to it. Thank you, Christopher, for sponsoring the lightning round with the Smeg 500. No thanks to Smeg who paid us no money for this. Yeah. All right, David. What's yours? I don't know anymore. Mine is, so MWC, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

1:22:13Barcelona. Barcelona was this week. Surprisingly newsy, MWC. John Porter and Allison Johnson are on our team. We're going to have them on Tuesday's show to give us the whole rundown. But the most personally exciting thing that happened was we actually got a first-person demo of the Humane AI pin, the mysterious gadget that I'm only—I'm like 90 % it's real. It's real now. Sam Sheffer is like making videos on the streets of New York with it. Sam, by the way, show it to me. Bring it over. Yeah. Come on the show, Sam. We'd love to have you back. The people need it. But Allison got a demo. She got to see some of it work and had a really interesting experience with it.

1:22:53The thing about this pen, I'm desperate to actually test this thing out because it seems like they did a lot of cool technology to it. The projector thing seems to work. She had it take a picture, and it identified her as a person with a Verge lanyard and all the other stuff in the background. Seriously impressive technology going in here. But Allison also sort of landed on the question that I think a lot of us have been asking about this device. It's like, what on earth is any of this for? Yeah. You made a neat thing that does some of the stuff that you said it was going to do. It also was super slow and I think overheated on the show floor.

1:23:26Very good. That's like conference demo stuff, whatever. I'll leave that alone. But she kind of got to the end and was like, why? why is this? Yeah. It does seem so. You can watch a video of it, of that demo, a lot of the places we post videos. Yeah, I think I saw it on our TikTok. Yeah, find a scrolly video place and look for the merch. And she asked a question, 19 seconds go by. That's tough. That's brutal. That's not good. In which she made small talk with the person. And then it started talking and interrupted. Yeah. It was like, oh, it's doing it. It's like, I don't know about this. She did say, and I think this is a lesson to everyone, she's like, this gadget would be so much cooler if this company wasn't so overbearingly serious about itself.

1:24:13Right? Like, if you're like, this will change the nature of culture. And it's like, you made a laser that says, like, your name. I don't know what you're doing. Well, what's funny is, like, I think there's been this interesting thing now where we have the Rabbit R1 and we have the Humane AI pin. And they are very much, like, racing each other to be kind of the nifty AI gadget that everybody's excited about. So Rabbit's CEO is just like nakedly out there trying to beat Humane to market, which I think is so funny. But they've just played this so differently, right? Where Jesse, the CEO of Rabbit, has been out there basically being like, this is like a silly fun thing that we made.

1:24:45We think it's cool. Let's see what happens. Maybe this will be the future. And you're right. And Humane is out here being like, we have changed the paradigm of your life. Yeah. And they just like seem sad in a room together. And it's like, what is happening? I feel like everyone is doing a Steve Jobs impression, but they never watched any Steve Jobs videos. Yes. Do you know what I mean? Yes. It's like they're doing an impression of who was it? It was Fassbender Steve Jobs, who's very serious all the time and very intense. And the real Steve Jobs is kind of a goofball. Yeah. If you go back and watch – I went back for some reason not that long ago and watched his first iPad reveal.

1:25:22Yeah. It's the most casual, relaxed, like man sitting on a chair using a web browser is the whole vibe of the thing. And it was, yeah, he would make jokes. He was funny. He was silly. Like that was their whole vibe. Yeah. And now everybody remembers him as this like dictator presenter. Yeah. It's like. Yeah. It's like he would get on stage like, so these are our competitors. They fucking suck. Look at this piece of shit. Here's what I made. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. Right. And like every like the humane. I don't know. There's something that's like everyone's doing an impression of the wrong thing.

1:25:53Even Apple kind of is increasingly getting serious in a way that feels kind of un-Jobs-y. Yeah. And I think they're doing an impression of those like the Johnny Ive design videos because Johnny Ive didn't like to be on stage. Yeah. So they would make these videos and be like, what is this? Plastic. It's very beautiful. It's like, what are you doing? And it's like, that didn't work. What worked was the other guy who was like, you know, I love his records. Now I put a thousand of them in your pocket. Huh? He pulled the MacBook Air out of a sleeve. It was sick. But anyway, so the Humane pin is supposed to ship, I think, at the end of March is the last thing that we've heard.

1:26:27That has slipped a little, but it's close enough that I think we're going to get these things for real soon. I bought one. I'm very excited about it. I can't believe you bought one. I have so many questions about why I spent$700 on a Humane AI pin. But I am fascinated by this thing. And every little step I get towards being able to make a phone call with a projector, I'm all about it. When you kick your kid out of the house at 18 and be like, I don't have money for college. I hope you hand them the Humane AI pin. I'll frame it. Be like, this is your gift. This is for you. In lieu of a college education.

1:27:02This thing, it takes 19. Sell this, my son, and go on your way. This thing will describe with medium accuracy what you are currently looking at. 19 seconds later. It's like, I'm the person wearing the Verge Langer. That's me. Yeah, exactly. All right, Neal, what's yours? I think I'm going to pick two. I'm going to pick two. I'm sorry. I'm going to pick two. I'm shocked. One, I'm going to start with the fun one. Okay. Okay. As you all know, Lauren doesn't know. As David knows, Lauren, you're going to find out, I have one dream as editor-in-chief of The Verge, which is for David to file a story to me and for me to mark it up with a red pen.

1:27:45That's all I want. Very old school. Very old school. I also would love a glass-walled conference room where we print out the layout of the magazine and I just move the pages around. We don't have a print magazine, so that dream has long since been – I just had to let it go. I'm never going to play professional basketball. I'm never going to move pages of a print magazine around a glass-walled conference room. The New York Mag people have a conference room in this office. Like, stare at it all the time. They're just moving pages. Do you ever go just move pages around just to see if they notice?

1:28:13Blow up the magazine. The red pen thing. No. One thing I could do is I could have David print out his Google Docs and circle them. Sadly, we don't live in the same place. That's not the reason. Just to be clear, that's not the reason I don't allow that. So every time a new stylus gadget comes out, I'm like, is this it? Is this the thing that will enable me to circle stuff? That's all I want. And in particular, circle David's copy in a red pen. The answer for a decade now has been no. We've tried almost every stylus gadget in this way, and they don't work. Google just released an update to Android at MWC.

1:28:52We're Google Docs on an Android tablet. It's called Project Inkwell. You can now markup with a pen. That's very exciting. The problem is that this requires you to have an Android tablet. It also requires David to file this copy to me. Well, it's a challenging problem. We're getting there. I'm just thrilled about this. Oh, yeah. We're getting an Android tablet. We're going to demo this on the show. It's going to happen. I'm excited about it. I can't see Liam right now. I imagine he's vigorously agreeing with me that we're going to do a demo of me. That is what's happening. He's circling things live on the Vergecast.

1:29:27That's all I want. This is my dream. We're going to do it. I would say, based on the history of Google Docs being good at things, I would not get your hopes super high. But I believe in this dream for you, and I want you to have it. If you could just add up the number of things that have to be good for this to go well. Android tablets, conceptually. The Google Docs app. The Android tablet. Android tablet stylus. Actually, some of the Samsung styluses are pretty good. Yeah, they're getting there. But does the S Pen support Google Docs markup on Android? It's okay. You just import it into Samsung's proprietary document viewer and then export it out.

1:30:06It's such a small dream. Just give it to me. Just figure it out. Take all that energy. Shut down Gemini. I put all those engineers on a circle problem. Be like, we'll do the Hamilton conundrum another day. Maybe now that the Apple car's gone, everybody's working on generative AI highlights. This could be you. What's your other one? It's TikTok. We got to talk about TikTok. We should talk about TikTok. So they're in a big fight. I believe tomorrow, as you're listening to this, is the Drop Dead deadline. So Universal Music Group, which has Taylor Swift, Usher, everybody you can think of. Justin Bieber, I believe.

1:30:37I looked at David right now. It's like your favorite. I can confirm. Harry Styles many others David the lead of one of David's stories this week was Justin Bieber so it was good stuff with a photo of Justin Bieber I want to point out what I'm here for David put a lot of the Beeb on the verge.com this week I spent 90 full minutes on Getty Images looking at pictures of Justin Bieber in public it was the best thing I did all week it's a good story anyway Universal owned all the biggest artists you can think of they're going to fight with TikTok over music licensing they say TikTok is a bully they don't want to pay the higher rates there was a first date That date came.

1:31:11The music went away. The poor woman on TikTok who has all the jobs, her sound is gone. Oh, no. And so she's just making increasingly sad TikToks about her sound being gone. It's awful. There's like a lot of this happening on the platform. And tomorrow, I believe, the time that you are currently listening to this, Friday, that's what it's called, is the drop dead date when the rest of it goes. and TikTok has already started pulling not just Universal's own music, but anybody who has a publishing deal with Universal, some of the songwriters that are associated with Universal. So even more music is coming off the platform, which I think TikTok thinks it has the leverage.

1:31:52Which is wild. I mean, one of the stats that I read, and I think a lot of this is really fuzzy, so who knows, but one of the stats that I read is I think it was something like 30 % of the songs, but 80 % of the videos with music would suddenly go silent. Like that's a huge number. That's just most of Taylor Swift off of Tik TOK. You've, that's not great. Yeah. And I think what Tik TOK is like, we seem to be fine. And I, I don't know if that's true where there are no numbers. We were trying to do some more reporting on it. One thing I've seen that's been really interesting in the last few days has been a bunch of up and coming artists who now can't promote their own songs on Tik TOK.

1:32:31Yep. Basically like a, A, having to figure out a new thing to do and B, kind of pleading with their audience. Like, keep watching my stuff. Follow me. Like it so that it stays on your For You page. Because if I can't put my song on it and you're not following me, the algorithm is not going to serve stuff. And this is the thing artists have said for forever is that, like, when they just make a thing where they talk, it doesn't do as well. So they do covers of well-known songs so that they get put into that part of the algorithm. Or they do their own songs that people like so they get served to their fans.

1:33:00But if it's just them talking to camera, that doesn't do as well. Like just historically, that is a thing I've seen a bunch of artists say on TikTok. And now it's like if you're an up and coming artist, the place where people find you is TikTok. And so I think it's just creating this interesting. And that's TikTok's leverage, right? That's what they're basically saying. But then Universal's leverage is Taylor Swift. Yeah. And most of the rest of the music people want to listen to and do stuff. but it's like that spectrum is going to affect people in so many messy ways. Also though, not having music on so many TikToks makes TikTok kind of unusable.

1:33:38That's totally been my experience now. It's like one out of every two videos is just awkwardly quiet. And it turned out watching people do TikTok dances with no music is uncomfortable. It's not a good time. And it takes you a couple seconds to register that there's no music. It's not that your volume is too low. It's weird. I totally agree. I'm surprised that YouTube has a much healthier relationship with Universal. Universal is like, we're very mad about fake Drake and AI. And YouTube is like, we made some stuff for you. We have a council about AI. I'm surprised that YouTube is not doing more to promote shorts in this moment and to say, all these creators come over here.

1:34:16Because that is, right now, their competitive advantage is that they have access to all this music. Yeah, they've been kind of quietly saying things like, we continue to be a good partner to the music industry and stuff like that. But it is weird that, like, Lior Cohen, who runs YouTube Music, is not out there being like, you want music? We have all the music. Like, you're kind of right. This is sort of YouTube's best shot. Instagram has the correct deals with the industry. They're not pushing it. I think Universal is basically like, all right, we just won't be on TikTok. That'll be the end of that.

1:34:44And, like, we have to figure out a new way to promote artists. But guess what we do? We're a record label. Yeah. There have been ways before. That's historically how we provide value to the artists. But we'll see. tomorrow I think will be an interesting day because I think it either gets solved or if they pull out even more, I think it actually drags on for quite a bit longer. I think you're probably right. Alright, do you have another one or should we just We should just get out of here. We should get out of here? You don't want to talk about Wendy's dynamic search pricing? No, they said they weren't going to do it.

1:35:11Alright, we've gone over as always. Lauren, thank you so much for joining the broadcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. Really fun. We'll have to have you back soon. Would love to. Whenever Clary Tom's issues. It's going to be a mega chill policy year, so So we probably won't have much to talk about, I don't think. It'll be great. All right. That's it. Alex will be back next week. That's VergeCast. Talk to me.

1:35:33And that's it for the VergeCast this week. Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-VERGE-11. The VergeCast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. That's it. We'll see you next week.

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