The history of Roku and the fight over CarPlay

24:38That's what I'm saying. Where's the ABC go? It would have just been the logo. I want to look at just the logo and then I want the ABC go app. ABC was still on go.com up until recently. It's wonderful. So was ESPN. I think the idea that it was an appliance actually served it well in its moment. Because remember, everyone else was trying to shove computers under your TV. And you were bringing in all of these computer metaphors. And this device was like, it's just your Netflix queue. It's just delivered here instead of in your mailbox. And there was a simplicity to it that made people think about it differently.

25:13The thing I would have changed is I would have gotten Netflix to spend more money to put at least a couple hit movies on there. Because every review basically ended with there's nothing to watch. Like, this is the future where there's nothing to watch. And I think the big change would have been, hey, like, let's find the money to get one blockbuster movie on here so that people have something to watch and, like, they're excited about it. Oh, the studios were terrified at that time, though. They would have said absolutely not. They didn't want any of their stuff streaming that way because they thought it was going to be like the end of how they make money.

25:45And it was. Yeah. They were. They were correct. But yeah, it's an interesting. Well, the next question is actually, is there an alternate timeline in which this thing was even more successful? Like what parallel universe makes the Netflix player an even bigger hit? And I think that's the one where Netflix starts spending on original content slightly quicker. Right. The thing that made Netflix streaming work was years later. Right. I can't help but think about this timeline in terms of gadget blogs. 2008 was in gadget. Netflix launched this house of cards. We were at the verge. Yeah. Right? And that's like years later.

26:17And that was the turn. Like just fully the turn into, okay, now these devices have their own content. And Netflix knew it. The movie studios did not want to give them the content. The TV studios did, which is how you end up with the office and suits and all this other stuff happening. But that was the thing they were missing. And eventually they just spent the money to figure it out by owning it directly. All right. A couple more questions, then we'll get out of here. Could you reboot this in 2024? I think the answer is no. I think like a Netflix specific thing has no place in 2024. What if it's like as an add on for the Apple TV and all the other ones where Netflix refuses to have its continued watching in their apps?

26:55Oh, that's interesting. I mean, but like, is it is there something to I want to turn on my TV? And the very first thing that appears is just Netflix, like skip the home screen, and just give me Netflix? I kind of think no. No, yeah, I think we're past that point. That would have been great in 2020 or 2019, but 2024, nobody wants that. Yeah, that's kind of where I land too. Neelai, what do you think? The constant ecosystem is just too fragmented. That's what I think too. Would this thing have been a bigger hit if Apple had made it? Is the next question. No, because they did and it wasn't a hit.

27:25No, but if Apple had made this thing, I don't mean Apple had made its own version. They had like marketed this thing. Take the Roku player and put Apple's name in front of it. Would it have been a bigger hit? Yes. I think so, too. This is 2008. Apple is coming off the iPhone. Things are starting to happen. I think this thing would have been bigger. Wait, how do you like this specific device? No way. No. Like the Apple Netflix player would have been a hit. I absolutely think so. The Steve Jobs Apple does not release this device as evidenced by the fact that they did not. In this world that I'm creating, the Steve Jobs Apple releases this device.

27:58Walt has told the story many times on the show. where he was talking to Steve and Steve desperately wanted to build a proper cable box. And he went to the cable companies and said, I'm going to build an actual cable box that it runs our software. It looks great. The whole thing. And the cable company said, here's our garbage middleware software to authenticate to our cable networks. You have to put a cable card in your box. And Steve Jobs said, no, like absolutely not. Like I'm leaving this category behind and everyone will just hear my literal dying words. I finally cracked it haunting them for a generation because TVs are garbage now.

28:34And it was just because he didn't want to use S video port, man. No way. Okay. Fair enough. And to be clear, they got all the way to the future of TV is apps with the Apple TV. And they have since walked that back by launching Apple TV Plus and doing the exact thing Netflix had to do, which is making their own content to drive their own services. Yep. 100 % agree. I also think it would have been a bigger hit if Apple made it. So I'm with Kranz. And last question before we go. Does the Roku Netflix player belong in the Virgin History Hall of Fame? 100%. No. Kranz, I want to hear you first. Why?

29:10Because I think what we've said here, this was where the streaming box came from, right? This is where streaming kind of like started to take off. This was that first big moment. I would argue that the next Roku was the actual moment. See, that's the one I'd put in the Hall of Fame. That's the one you'd put in the Hall of Fame? I just think this one is so important because we wouldn't have that next Roku without it. It's tricky. It's tricky. Neelai, is your argument it's not this one, it's the next one? Yeah, it's the first one that people started buying, right? I mean, that's real. This one was not a huge hit.

29:42It was like the opposite. It was like a, I don't know, it was like a sketch. It was like they sold a prototype and they realized they had a good idea and then they finished the idea. And that's the one that like actually changed the industry because it moved the way consumer demand was going. Okay. All right. Well, we will we will rehab this debate when we do that one, because that'll be a fun episode, too. But for now, I think it stays out of the Hall of Fame. OK. Also, because this is the first time we've ever done it. If we put the first thing in the Hall of Fame, it just feels like we're on a bad path.

30:08Yeah. Everything's entering the Hall of Fame. Yeah. It's no good. Yeah. It's like, are you going to put Windows Media Center? No. Probably not. No. But Microsoft Silverlight. Yes. By the way, Microsoft took the deal from the cable companies and shipped Windows PCs with cable card slots in them. Yep. nightmare. And actually, I think the headline in Engadget was nightmare. Feels right. All right. Thank you both for going on this journey with me. We got to take a break and then we will come back and we have more pilots for you. We'll be right back.

30:53Support 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. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new features can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. either post your job for free or pay to promote.

31:28Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of SMBs using LinkedIn say that it helps them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than two and a half million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash track. That's linkedin.com slash track to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

32:06Welcome back. So for our next pilot, we're going to do a debate show. Liam James, our producer, has been wanting to do this like for as long as I've been back at The Verge. He just has this idea of like, OK, what if we basically structure a way for everybody to yell at each other? and this is the kind of thing that we've discovered comes up on the show actually all the time there are tons of things in tech with one side and then the other we've had you know playstation versus xbox and we've had android versus ios and we've had debates as weird as like which brand of windshield wiper fluid is the best the point is it's just fun to pit things against each other and yell at each other about them and that's kind of what we do all day at the verge anyway So Liam put together a whole structure, a whole thing, and basically set up a very formal, litigious universe in which we can settle once and for all, which is better.

33:01For the first one, we picked, I would say, one of the things we feel more aggressively contested about right now, which is the software in your car. This is the is CarPlay the future or is it a nightmare debate? Here we go.

33:20Good day. I'm Liam James, moderator for today's debate, and my job is to facilitate a debate between today's hosts on the topic of automotive infotainment systems like CarPlay and Android Auto. Today, we have Editor-in-Chief, Nilay Patel. Welcome, Nilay. Hello. And Editor-at-Large, David Pierce. David, welcome to the debate. Thank you. All right. Before we get started, I'd like to share the rules with our audience so each person will make their case for the VergeCast audience. A virtual coin toss will determine— My opponent is a communist. A virtual going toss will determine who goes first. We'll have opening statements, and following that, each host will be given two minutes to answer my questions with up to an optional one-minute rebuttal from the opposing host.

34:00The questions were not shared in advance with either person. Our hosts may use the internet to confirm factual details, but they use their limited time while doing so. Okay, and with that, let's get to our topic for today. All the way back in June 2013, if you can remember that far back, Apple introduced CarPlay. Actually, they called it iOS in the car, if I remember correctly, originally. It was a standard that enabled in-dash head units in cars to display and control a more modern smartphone-like interface. Not long after, Android introduced their own standard with similar capabilities, but a lot has changed since then.

34:34In mid-2024, we asked the question, what is better for consumers? Is it CarPlay, Android Auto, and similar systems? Or should the automakers take back control and do this all themselves? All right. We are going to start off by doing a quick virtual coin toss. Technically, you're the visiting team, Eli, so you get to pick heads or tails. Tails never fails. All right. And it is tails. So, Eli, would you like to go first or would you like to go last with your closing statements? I'd like to go last. You'd like to go last. It's a real defer to the second half move. It's the right call. It's the right call.

35:15Defense wins championships, David. Okay, great. It will be no surprise to our audience that Nilay will be arguing today for the car makers and David will be arguing for CarPlay and Android Auto. All right, let's get started with opening statements. David, you're up first. You have up to two minutes. My argument is very simple, which is that it's not that you couldn't have very good software built by car makers. It's that you won't. It's that it doesn't exist. It has never existed and it will never exist. By bringing your phone into the car, what you get is an interface you understand. You get the apps you already have.

35:52You get the data that already exists on your device. You don't have to rely on a bunch of car companies who have made decades worth of awful software and now are trying to charge you more subscriptions. They're trying to sell your data. They're trying to own more of the experience, largely based on software sacks that some company, including those car companies, is not going to keep caring about. I am in control when I use CarPlay. I get to plug the thing in or pair it over Bluetooth. It just works. It is my music app. It's my podcast app. I can use whatever I want for navigation, not whether somebody signed a deal with Waze or here or whoever.

36:28It's my phone and the car should do car things. The car should keep me alive and get me where I'm going. And everything else should be somebody else's problem. And there is precisely zero evidence to show that car makers can build good software, including the car makers everybody says build good software. Do not build good software. They build good car software. So my thing is, let's let software companies be software companies and let car companies be car companies, and everybody can win. And it's just that simple. And Nilay Patel, your opening statement. My fellow Americans, I come before you with two arguments.

37:00Well, three. First, David is a communist. That's important. And we should not agree to his radical communist agenda. Second, no matter what, As long as I've made that point clear, I think that's important. Two, I'm not arguing that car makers are good. I'm arguing that CarPlay in particular is bad. CarPlay has not meaningfully changed in a decade. You can't do something as simple as look at a list of songs while looking at the map in CarPlay. You just can't do it. The idea that Apple will somehow get good at showing you two applications at once on an iOS device is a pipe dream that we've seen fail over and over again with the iPad for a decade now.

37:39They're just not going to do it. Your opportunity for CarPlay is limited. And that's fine if, like communist David here, you think the state should limit you to one application at a time in your car. My second point is that cars are getting ever more complicated. And the idea is that cars are not a software experience is silly. I'm not saying they're good at the software now. Even your Teslas, your Rivians. I've been test driving Rivian for three days now. It's not great. I'm not pretending it's great. But things like charging your EV, managing your range, knowing where all the nearby chargers are, combined with autonomous driving, setting a destination on the map and letting the car help you get there.

38:20All stuff the car is going to do more and more of. And if you're an Apple fan, you know that integrated solutions are better than the weird Bluetooth fragmentation that David and his commie brethren would foist upon you. be a true american let gm put android in your car vote patel that was fantastic okay with those opening statements we will move on to our first question which is going to be for david pierce hello david driving can be considered one of the more dangerous activities we complete in our daily lives many people consider the car play and android auto interfaces to be less tactile and And more specifically, the removal of buttons inside of modern cars has caused a lot of consternation on the side of older drivers.

39:10What do you say to the people that want all the important safety interfaces, things like windshield wipers, climate control for fogged up windows, things that you need to be able to quickly turn on and off in the car being relegated to touchscreen interfaces? I have two points to make. And Liam, thank you for asking that. Very good question. Point number one. This is a bad trend. You always know the person's not sure what they're going to say yet when they compliment the moderator's question. I'm sorry. I'm reclaiming my time from the moderator. This trend is wrong. I am pro buttons. We are pro buttons here on the VergeCast.

39:54Buttons are good. We should have more dedicated controls for doing things. That is not the trend that we are on. Neither Apple nor Google caused that trend. This trend towards touch interfaces for everything in cars is, I believe, a bad idea, but it is the one that we are on. And so what I'm arguing is that rather than present you with a giant set of brand new controls every time you get into a vehicle or onto a scooter or anything, that you should have a system that you understand. end and that I am now bringing this thing with me instead of basically just being tossed into the deep end of somebody's bad software design every single time I sit down in front of the steering wheel.

40:34Would I like to completely change the car industry such that none of this was important and that there was a button that I could just roll the windows down with and I didn't have to guess how to open the handles to get in the freaking car? Yes, of course. But that is not where we are. And so what matters more than ever actually is consistency and having some cross-car understanding of where things are and how they work. And there is no better system for that than CarPlay and Android Auto. Wow, that was exactly two minutes. Nelide, would you like to rebut that? You've spoken like a true communist.

41:06Is there a penalty for ad hominem attacks on this? David would have you turn away from the freedom and innovation and liberty of the market to put insane door handles on vehicles and instead have Tim Cook impose a draconian system of weird sliders and that gray scale that they do that doesn't look good even on an OLED display. You know what I'm talking about? It's just not good. It just doesn't look good. As Americans, we should have the freedom to have cars that look cool and operate the windshield wipers in ever more esoteric ways. Automatic, you say? Nay. I will push whatever button I choose to push.

41:43am i a car socialist i think i may be a car socialist i never thought about this david hates liberty he wants everyone to drive one of those weird russian cars with the bubble windshields and all the controls are exactly the same and you know how to use them because you've been given a car by dictator pierce over here gentlemen gentlemen more american let's keep taking the open road with a variety of buttons and knobs let's keep the rhetoric down gentlemen moving on to our next question yeah let's just move the gas pedal who even cares Do whatever you want. It doesn't even matter. Cars are fine.

42:15What's the worst that could happen? That's free market, baby. Next question is for you, Neelai. Neelai, you mentioned in your opening statement the problem of having many more capabilities in cars and the inability to show those in ways that allows for multitasking or multi-window interfaces to make this both easier and safer to use. What makes you think automakers are the right people to fix that problem? Again, let me be clear. I'm arguing mostly that CarPlay is bad. I don't think that car makers are the best people to solve this problem. In fact, I think they might be some of the worst. But no one will try to solve the problem if we just give everything to one company, if we just hand over our interfaces to one company with no incentive to do anything other than to get you to buy another iPhone or to sign up for one of their various services.

43:07You want to buy a new car that comes with three months of free Apple TV Plus? Be my guest. Let it ride. I'm just saying you will never get new ideas in this market if you give up. And David would have us give up to live in his top down government control. Emphasis on live, as in remain alive. I'm just saying we're headed towards a future where I believe people would like to both look at the map and pick the next song without having to literally switch apps because the car will be doing more of the work itself. I don't see a pathway from the CarPlay we have today to that future, and I see no indication that Apple is interested in that.

43:50I also see a future in which there are more screens in the cars. There are more screens in the car where passengers are doing more things on the screens in the car. And having that all tied to one phone seems a little bonkers. I think you want your car to be as integrated and as functional as your smartphone. And I think it's on carmakers to get there. And I'm saying I get there now, but I'm saying I don't want to live in David's weird dystopian nightmare future. The weird dystopian nightmare future you're describing is one in which you know how to use your car. Is that what we're talking about here?

44:24I am pro-competition. I believe in the idea that we can have lots of different options here. I don't think a world in which CarPlay is the only interface that exists is the ideal outcome. I'm just saying it's better than a world in which I am getting into a car and just banking on GM to have finally, for the first time in its history, built good software. I would point you to GM, a company that very famously broke up with Android Auto and CarPlay, has had disastrous consequences, had to stop selling the first car on which it made its own software because its software was so bad. This is what we're up against.

45:04I'm not arguing CarPlay is the solution to all of our problems. I'm just arguing it's better than that. Real-time fact check, sir. Eli, it's not your turn. Real-time fact check. You will have a chance to respond with your next question. Yeah, listen, the move is just talk over the moderator. We've been through this before. Come on. I feel like all of us have learned some very bad lessons along the way here. Please, I welcome your real-time fact checks, sir. All right. Again, no one's saying that GM is good at software. It wasn't the move away from Android Auto that caused the Blazer to get recalled and have the stop.

45:35So that was their bad battery software. It's GM's general software ineptitude. It's different software. The Escalades are moving. People are buying Escalades. People are buying the cars that don't have the stuff. But what they are enjoying about it is they get in the car and it already has a Spotify app and it already has Google Maps, which are the only things people want. And are completely duplicative of the apps that they already have on their phone. Gentlemen, we need to move on. The next question is for you, David Pierce. Long before options like CarPlay and Android Auto came out, we had problems with cell phones and cars, text messaging, distracting people, people talking on the phone.

46:11Lots of things went in place to try to regulate that, hands-free options and stuff like this. Are you really saying that people should have apps in their cars? Should they be playing with Spotify and Apple Music and all of these interfaces when they're driving a car? I would encourage you to spend one minute watching people drive their cars. Everyone is looking at their phone all of the time. And again, would it be great if some of the systems that these companies have tried to implement had worked? If the things like the driving modes and the auto text response that says driving, call you back later.

46:44Have you ever gotten one of those texts? No one's ever gotten one of those texts. Those aren't a thing. The good news is because, as my ridiculous opponent said in the first correct thing he said this entire time, people do just want a couple of apps. Maybe it's Google Maps and Spotify. Maybe it's Apple Maps and Apple Music. What I gain by bringing my own device is I get to use the apps that I want. I'm not forced into someone else's locked down system that will inevitably be an old version of Android running old apps and not running very many apps. I get to have the stuff that I want. So the best case that I have for safety is to push that stuff to the large display in front of me instead of requiring me to constantly look down at my phone.

47:26So actually, every single app that I'm adding to one of these two app stores through which I can actually get the things that I care about is an improvement. It's not going to solve everything because everybody is still going to look at their phone, but it's better. My friend, how popular is CarPlay? Extremely popular. Everyone has it, right? It's everywhere. Do you know why people are still looking at their phones in their cars? Because CarPlay sucks. That's why. Because it can't do the things that the people want to do. So they pick up their phones anyway, making driving, according to the latest statistics I've seen, 5 ,000 % more dangerous.

48:00Based on the numbers. That's the America David Pierce wants you to live in. Right. You can look at my website, Nealai Patel for CarPlayPresident.com, and please donate. All I'm saying is if CarPlay was good, you would not see people constantly using their phones in their cars. And if car makers could make good software, people wouldn't be using CarPlay. No, because you're plugging in your phone or worse, you're on wireless CarPlay, which has brought down the rate of new car satisfaction because it's so flaky over the past three years. You've taken the big real estate of the big screen and you've turned it into a single unit tasking limited application model.

48:37And then people use their phones anyway. Why not allow that screen to do multiple things at once? Neelai, what makes you think car makers can do this at all? Two things. One, they're trying, which is interesting. You don't see a lot of trying in technology these days. And second, there are some results that show that how we build and design cars is changing. So Tesla is way ahead here. They've reduced the number of computers in their cars over the years to almost nothing at this point. And that's Tesla. Great. They've also reduced the number of curved surfaces on their trucks to zero. And then you look at Rivian, which just updated the R1 platform to something they're calling the zonal architecture.

49:18They're combining the multiple sensor arrays and microprocessors and controllers and integrated systems on their cars into big computers in zones of the car that control various functions. That's a big deal. That's literally a rethink of how cars are designed, how they operate, all the functions of a car, all the bits and bobs or even that can be controlled, not only from the touchscreen, but remotely, requires the car to have a computing architecture that can do all the stuff. Then you can put an interface on top of that. Maybe that interface is CarPlay. But you need to do that work, the hardcore computer design integration work across the car to even have the opportunity to do something like introduce cool new features with over-the-air updates.

50:04You just have to design the car differently. All the car makers want to do this. So they have the desire, and then there's competition in the market that's pushing them to deliver. And if you just give up the screen to Apple and say, look, this car is here to get you from point A to point B, I believe the world will turn gray, much like the Soviet Union. Have you ever seen The Hunt for Red October? It's one of my favorite movies. If they had CarPlay and Submarines, it would have solved a lot of problems. I'm just saying. David, do you want to respond to that? I do want to respond. My response is that I agree that car companies should be in charge of making their cars work.

50:37That's not what we're debating here. That's not a complicated question. And to the extent that making a car work is increasingly a job of building and maintaining computers, sure, learn how to do that. But it is just simply true that these companies have no track record and very little ability to build good, usable software for humans. Most of the time, most of what's happening in a car is abstracted away from the person who is using it. And that's good. Most of it should not be your job to figure out all the time. If you had to pick which brake you applied every time you applied the brakes, bad things would happen.

51:12It's good that that's attracted away from you. The stuff that is not is the stuff that is in front of you. It's the navigation. It's the music. It's basic controls over the systems inside of your car. That stuff should be separate. And you, the user, the driver, the passenger, whoever you are in the car, should be able to control what that is. And you should be able to bring it with you in a way that is consistent and is personalized and is yours. Let the car companies be car companies.

51:41Okay, going to closing statements. David, you're first. Okay, let me describe to you some things that I don't want. I don't want a car that I get in and cannot make any sense of no matter what. I don't want a car that doesn't have my apps. I don't want a car that has my apps, but doesn't know anything about me like where I live or where my office is or any of the places that I like to go. I think of car companies and tech companies as like sports owners. Like they're very good at business. They make a lot of money and then they go buy a sports team and they think because they knew how to run like a mortgage company, they know how to run a sports team and they'll just do it the same way.

52:21Different things, let different things be different things. And letting someone build good infotainment software that humans are supposed to use is so radically different from what it takes to make a car work very well. I don't think the Apple car was a good idea. I kind of think Waymo is weird and way out over its skis and doing some crazy stuff. Like let the tech companies do the tech things, let the car companies do the car things. I'm not interested in updating my car's software every time a new Spotify feature appears. I am not interested in having to upgrade my car just because Google forgets about its Android automotive nonsense in two years.

53:00I want to be able to bring my technology to my car, and I want my car to keep me alive. Those are two different jobs, and I'm okay with them being different jobs. And Mr. Patel. My friend David Pierce makes an impassioned case. But my friends, he is wrong. Because if you listen to him, you would believe that CarPlay is any good at all. It's not. It just isn't. Just look at it. You don't have to believe me. You don't have to look at charts and graphs or go to my website, vote for PatelCarSoftware.com and leave a$20 donation. 95 % of Americans have donated$20 or less. You don't have to do any of those things, but you should.

53:42Just look at it. Who are you going to believe? David Pierce, his slick tongue, his carpetbag? It's not good. It hasn't substantively changed in a decade. It's just the same list of things. I, like many Americans, most Americans, all Americans, believe that the greatest joy in life is buying something expensive and then pushing all of the buttons. In Pierce's communist America, there's none of that. You just get in the car and it's the same old dumb car play that you've had for the past 10 years with nothing new on the menu. I don't want to live in that America. I want to live in America where, God forbid, some software designer at Ford has decided to move all the climate controls around.

54:27And then you got to figure it out. And then you figured it out. And you've won one tiny shred of victory in your life. Vote Patel. I can see why you were a good lawyer. You just said nothing. And I'm like, yeah. 80 % how you sound. 20 % what you say. That was good. I feel it. You're dead wrong. And CarPlay is... No one thinks CarPlay is great. It's just that it's better. And I live in a world where better is enough. Here, again, I've spent several days with the Rivian. The Rivian maps are better. They're good. But the actual zooming when you drive around with the maps is so deeply confusing. Because it zooms in on the map as you get closer to a turn.

55:15rendering your ability to know how, like when the turn is going to be like to nothing. Perfect. It's good, but it's better, but it's better than CarPlay. That's all I'm saying. You can have the music player and the map on the big screen at the same time. I mean, that does sound nice. I'll give you that. No, there can be no agreeing. No agreeing. We both hate each other. Okay, VergeCast listeners, what do you think? Did Nelai make the case better or did David? Let us know what you think by calling 866-VERGE11 or email us at vergecast at theverge.com. And let us know what you think of this new format and what other topics you'd like us to debate.

55:50There's a whole lot more to this conversation at theverge.com. We'll put some links in the show notes, but also read theverge.com.

56:01All right, we got to take one more break and then we're going to get to the Vergecast hotline. We'll be right back.

56:09Oh, hey, welcome to gift wrapping. Whoa, Zoe Saldana. Hey, can you wrap these, please? Wow, iPhone 17s. You splurged. At T-Mobile, you can get four iPhone 17s on them. It's the perfect gift for everyone. I'm the worst. I only got my mom a robe. Well, it's better than socks. So, I have to trade in my old phone, right? No, at T-Mobile, there's no trade-ins needed when you switch. Keep your old phone or give it as a gift. Incredible. In fact, wrap up my old phone, too, for my Aunt Rosa. Forget that. Aunt Liz will be jealous. Sounds like my family drama. Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with, hey, where are you going?

56:44To T-Mobile! Thanks, Zoe! The holidays are better at T-Mobile. Get four iPhone 17s on us. No trade in needed when you switch. Plus four lines for just$25 a line. With 24 monthly bill credits and four eligible boardings on essentials for well-qualified customers, auto pay plus taxes, fees, and$35 device connection chart. Credits end of balance due if you pay off earlier. Cancel. Contact us. Finance agreement. 256 gigabytes. $830 required. Visit T-Mobile.com. All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11, and the email is vergecastattheverge.com. We love all your questions, and we try to answer at least one on the show every week.

57:22This week, we have a question about something that is unfortunately near and dear to my heart right now as well. David, it's Liam from Virginia. I have a problem. How do I stop all of these insane spam and political texts? In the last two weeks, I've gotten over 60 spam texts or texts begging me to donate to different political campaigns, candidates that I've never given my information to. I'm assuming they got my info because of some candidate I gave a donation to years ago. How do I get off these lists? Of course, there's just the regular spam stuff that I get, but it's completely taken over my messages app.

58:04I don't want to get a new phone number. I like my phone number. A lot of stuff's tied to it. Is there anything that I can do? I know getting on the do not call list doesn't help with political campaigns. Help me out here. Thanks. Love the show. Okay, so at least for people in the United States, this is a huge and widespread problem. I don't know how big a deal it is in other countries. I've heard a lot about folks getting political spam on WhatsApp and other places. But I just want to talk about the U.S. for right now, because this, in a funny way, is actually maybe more complicated in the United States than most places.

58:37And the unfortunate answer to the question is there really isn't anything you can do, at least not anything that is kind of guaranteed to work in a sweeping, broad way. So there's one kind of text that is from a legitimate business about legitimate business purposes. Right. Those are the ones sometimes that you'll sign up for when you get a receipt from Square. Right. You'll you'll have signed up to get text messages. And usually what those things will have is they'll say stop to unsubscribe. And typically you respond stop and it stops. Right. Like that. That is actually a thing that these companies are legally required to do is stop when you say stop.

59:15And there are systems that some carriers have to block that stuff. Like, that actually works as a system when it is legitimate. When it's not legitimate, the problem with replying stop to a mass text message is actually what you've done is you've confirmed to whatever spammer is sending that spam text that your number is real and that someone is paying attention to it. And what that essentially gives them is license to keep spamming you. There's no technical reason that they have to stop if you say stop, and they won't. So this is the risk that you're taking, right? If you get a political text, let's say, from an actual campaign run by an actual above-board organization, and you reply stop, you'll stop getting it.

59:58All it does is stop that one thing. And frankly, the honest truth is your phone number and my phone number have probably been sold a million times to a million different organizations. So you're forever playing this game of whack-a-mole. There's no just like turn off the political text button that you can press, but you can do it one by one. And if you reply stop over and over and over again, the numbers will go down. That's been my experience. Every time I get one that is obviously from a campaign, and usually you can Google the number, by the way, and it will tell you pretty reliably if it is a real number from a real campaign.

1:00:29If it is and you reply stop, it will go down. Again, whack-a-mole, but it'll work. if you get it wrong and you reply to something that looks like a political text but is actually a spammer or a scammer of some kind which is a thing that they do especially in moments like this you've just caused yourself extra problems so really what you have to balance here is okay do i want to do the work of verifying every one of these numbers in order to go press the stop button which just means texting stop and make them go away or is it less work to just frankly ignore the text messages. There are also a couple of things you can do other than replying.

1:01:07One thing you can do is delete it and report it to your carrier, which in theory will tune their systems for detecting spam. So that might make it better for everybody. But it also is, you know, manual labor. Every time you get one of these from a new number, you swipe and you hit delete and report junk and it goes to Verizon and whoever your carrier is. And that slowly makes things better, but it will not immediately solve all of your problems. There's also things like RoboKiller and other apps that try to intercept some of that stuff. I found that they work-ish. Like, there are a lot of things like that that will make things slightly better, but there is no way to just go and say, do not send me political texts.

1:01:48Unfortunately, by the time you get one, that ship has probably sailed. Your number is in some database. Everybody has access to that database. Those databases get sold a million times over and you are forever resigned to getting a lot of politics texts. One thing I've heard from a bunch of people is that if you are getting a lot of these using the filters, especially on iOS, that will actually filter out messages from unknown numbers can be really handy. If you're getting like an overwhelming number of these, you can go into settings, you can filter unread messages, and it'll just dump those into it's kind of the equivalent of like the other inbox on Facebook or one of the other like LinkedIn kind of social apps that people you haven't necessarily put into your contacts or declared that you care about, get foisted into that other one.

1:02:35I did that for a while. And it turned out I missed a lot of text messages from people who I actually cared about, but didn't have their number, your mileage may vary. So, like I said, there are a lot of half measures here, but I think what I would recommend if you're trying to get this down is Google the phone numbers of ones you're getting a lot to make sure that they're legitimate and then delete those text messages, reply, stop and report whatever spam and junk you can to your carrier. That helps you and it helps everybody. But be careful because all it takes is a couple of incorrect responses and all of a sudden you've flagged to whoever sent that message and to whoever owns the database of those numbers and everything else that you are legit and you are paying attention.

1:03:17And when you do that to the wrong people, it can be a problem. So the politics hacks are only going to get worse. If you have a better idea about how to get rid of them, please let me know. I'm all ears because I am getting just aggressively too many of them right now. And I'm deeply tired of it, too. So good luck to all of you out there with your text messages. I hope that helps a little. All right. That is it for the Vergecast today. Thanks to everybody who came on the show. Thank you for listening. Again, we want to hear everything you think about these pilots. We're trying new formats. It's been fun to mess around and see, like, are these things we want to do on the Vergecast every once in a while?

1:03:50are these entirely new shows we should launch? Let us know everything you're thinking. There's also lots more on all this stuff. Our coverage of CarPlay and the Automakers, our coverage of Roku and the Streaming Wars, all this stuff is all over theverge.com. We'll put some links in the show notes, especially to the stuff that we referenced in a lot of these pilots, but just check out the website. It's a good website. It's a shockingly newsy summer, so keep it locked on theverge.com. And as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other streaming gadgets that you think we should make shows about, email us at vergecast at theverge.com or keep calling the hotline.

1:04:22It's 6-6-VERGE-1-1. We love hearing from you. I'm on vacation. I'm going to be back in two weeks. We're going to have lots more to do because again, it's a real newsy summer. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poore. The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai and the gang will be back on Friday to talk about, I don't even know, I'm on vacation. Whatever news there is because there just keeps being news. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

1:04:55Support for this show comes from SC Johnson. We've all been there. Choosing not to wear your new white shoes because there's a 10 % chance of rain. Bending awkwardly over the tiny coffee table to enjoy a sip of your latte. Not ordering the red sauce. Those feelings of dread are what we call stain-ziety. But now, you can break free from your Stainxiety with Shout's Triple Acting Spray that has stain-fighting ingredients to remove a huge variety of stains, so you can live in the moment and clean up later. Just breathe and shout with Shout Triple Acting Spray. Learn more at ShoutItOut.com.