The TikTok ban, and what comes next

27:16I mean, I think it's possible that Trump then does instruct his DOJ not to enforce the law. And then that just, you know, because at least for him, that would give him a chance to say, look, I tried to save TikTok. And if Apple and Google don't want to let you have it, then that's on them. So I think it's possible we see something like that, and then it's on those companies to decide what risk they're willing to take. I don't know that they're going to be willing to stick their necks out for another company, one with which Google, for example, competes with directly through YouTube Shorts. So I think we will see some form of a ban.

27:58I think after that point, maybe we see some discussions about a deal. I think maybe Trump, instead of trying to get the DOJ not to enforce the law, tries to use it as leverage to extract some kind of deal to end up making TikTok in compliance with the law. But like we were discussing earlier, I think it seems unlikely that China would actually be willing to sell the app. And that's really the bottom line is it's up to China to decide to sell it. And I think that's a big part of why we haven't seen a sale up to this point. Right, right. And do you think if you were to tell 12 months ago you that this is the point that we've landed on January 14th of 2025, would you have been surprised?

28:43I would have been surprised. Yeah, I guess that would have been before this bill was even introduced, I'm pretty sure. I would have been surprised, mostly because not much happens to, you know, to the point of being introduced into law and, you know, going to the Supreme Court in tech policy. You know, we've tried to get much more, you know, basic things passed in tech policy, like privacy legislation, you know, basic privacy protections. And that has been just held up in Congress for years and years and years. And somehow they were able to get, you know, hundreds of lawmakers behind this law in very short order.

29:28And we're now at the point that the Supreme Court is about to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down on it, basically. Yeah. If you've trained me on one thing in the time that I've known you, it's that the speed of this is insane. Like, A, the fact that it happened, that it managed to go through this whole process in a relatively bipartisan way is remarkable, given what happens to the tech. But also the fact that we did it in essentially like eight months is just unheard of. Like it's yeah, it's and given the fact that we had tried this before and it failed and everybody was mad for a long time, but kind of nothing happened.

30:02And then just all of a sudden, like poof, out of nowhere. And it just runs through this whole process in eight months and might actually finish on January 19th is is just procedurally wild. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is extremely unusual for tech policy, for Congress in general. It's very much unprecedented. Yeah. All right. Before I let you go, let's just talk for five minutes about Meta. We talked a little bit about this on the show last week in Vegas. The moderation changes the company has been making. Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan and had a lot of thoughts about masculinity. We'll leave that to the side.

30:39I think there are a couple of stories we wrote that are very good that I'll put in the show notes that you should go read. But I'm particularly curious for you as a person covering like politics and policy. What do you what do you make of all of these moves that are making this is happening right before we inaugurate a new president, a new a new administration is about to come in. What are you seeing in the politicking of all of this? Yeah. So I think I kind of separated into two buckets in my mind. The first bucket is like what normally happens when there's a change in administration and businesses realize, all right, we got to we got to figure out how we're going to deal with this for the next four years.

31:16So, you know, I think things like having Joel Kaplan take over a lot of their policy operations makes sense. I think that's a very kind of standard move to kind of have someone who's more in line with the current administration lead your policy office. I also put the everybody donating to the inauguration fund in that same bucket. Totally. You can be cynical about that all you want and you can be mad that companies don't live out their values, whatever. But like that is the most straightforward transactional we would like to be in a room with the new president more often move. And every company is going to do it.

31:49Right. I think no one's going to none of these companies are going to just say, you know what, on principle, we're going to sit this one out. Like, I don't think that's really in any of their interests. They want to have a seat at the table. They want to have a good starting point. And, you know, I don't think it's that big of a deal to them to donate a million dollars to these like multi-billion dollar corporations. So I think, yeah, that's definitely in the same bucket to me. And I think there's also the fact that Elon Musk is right in Trump's ear. And I think they realize if we're not at the table, then the only person they're hearing from in tech is Elon Musk.

32:30And do we want to go along with all the policies that only he is representing to Trump? So I think they all know, like, we need to we need to be in play here. And I think a lot of the moves are about that. I think there's also, you know, things like the end of fact checking at Meta seems like something that maybe Mark Zuckerberg wanted to do for a while. And this is, you know, a good way for him to do it while also kind of gaining some points with Trump. Then I think there's like this other bucket where it's, you know, things that are really geared at Trump in particular, at, you know, this full Republican sweep across the government that we're going to see take over.

33:10And I think, you know, it's a recognition that the times have changed. We have to really change how we go about things. and also maybe perhaps a sense from within Zuckerberg himself that he's felt like we've gone too far or, you know, this isn't the way that I want to run this company. I think we've always seen him kind of say he doesn't want to be the speech police. He doesn't want to decide what's right and wrong. And I think we've seen that impulse take different iterations, whether it's the oversight board or something else. And now we're seeing it take shape with him trying to not involve fact checkers and to really loosen speech policies on his platforms.

33:51And I think the fact checking, again, I think seems like something he wanted to do for a long time. I think the changes to, you know, what sort of speech is allowed on meta platforms is probably like the more overall impactful thing because there's just going to be a wider range of the kinds of speech that you're going to see on those platforms that I think a lot of users probably won't want to see. Yeah, I think one version of his thinking, he being Mark Zuckerberg, that I actually find, if not good, then at least sort of reasonable, is that I think he has spent a long time learning that trying to be out front of speech policy is a total waste of time, that That caring about this stuff politically is all downside.

34:43And it has gained him nothing. And I think after four years of fighting with the Biden administration about all the bad things that are happening on meta platforms, he is now just like, you know what, screw it. Like, I don't care. There is now a president who doesn't care. Why on earth would I continue to fight this fight? All it does is cause me pain. And I think, A, that is a perfectly reasonable place for him to have landed. And B, I think that sucks. Right? Like that is that is a real problem for a lot of people on a lot of platforms. But I also kind of understand how he got there. And it like it says a lot about our political environment that both of those things can be true at the same time.

35:18But I do wonder, like, are we just at a point now where we're just going to stop talking about speech policy because it's just a total waste of everybody's time and energy? I think that's highly possible. I think it feels so bleak to say out loud, but I honestly feel like that's where we are. No, I think so. I think, you know, we went from this world of like, you know, oh, social media platforms are so new and, you know, it's just the Wild West and everyone says whatever they want. And then realizing, OK, well, we can't get advertisers on here if we just have actual Nazis here and people don't want to see that stuff.

35:53And I think, you know, we went through kind of a big reckoning where we went a lot in the other direction. And then I think the companies realized, oh, actually, by actively doing something around speech policies, we're getting a lot of flack because we're both being told we're not going far enough and we're being told we're going too far. And so we can't win. And so I think this is kind of, you know, Mark Zuckerberg throwing up his hand saying like, all right, you know, more than half the country voted for Trump this time. And, you know, whatever, like, let's like not do something instead of doing something and we'll still get yelled at either way.

36:32Right. Yeah. How much do you think this is about Mark Zuckerberg in particular? Because, you know, a lot has been made of Trump's prognostications about throwing Zuckerberg in jail for the rest of his life. And there has obviously been some tension here. But then on the flip side, I agree with you that watching him sit there with Joe Rogan, it felt like he was unloading a bunch of stuff that has been sitting on his chest for a very long time. So I guess this is sort of an impossible question to answer. But like, to what extent do you think this is him playing politics with a new president versus like freed by a new president to just say the things he already believed?

37:11And I'm sure it's some of both. Yeah, I definitely think it's both. I think, you know, if if you're threatened by Donald Trump with being thrown in jail, you know, he he says a lot of things and maybe he's not actually going to try to do that. But like, maybe he will. and I think you would want to get on his good side. So I'd imagine that's a factor in his thinking. At the same time, I think from a lot of recent interviews that Mark Zuckerberg has done, I think there's this sense that he's like sick of apologizing and he's like sick of having always been the bad guy and, you know, having to try to do the right thing and everyone yells at him no matter what.

37:50So I think it seems like it is somewhat a personal change and thinking of like, well, I can't please everyone. So let me please the person who has the most power here for the next four years. Right. Just to be clear, we don't feel bad for Mark Zuckerberg. No. Having to have spent all this time apologizing for the thing that you built. I don't feel that bad. Sorry, buddy. But yeah, and what I wonder is how much fallout that is going to have, right? Because he is like, we are in a moment where it is now really easy to say the things that people have been saying quietly for years loudly. And I think we're starting to see those policies start to shift and we're starting to see that the forced culture shift back to some things that had started to change but now are being unwound again.

38:39And the question of like, is this just Mark? Is this just Meta? Or is there a broader sort of Silicon Valley culture change coming and all of that to me is like one of the big questions of the next few months. And I got the sense even just talking to folks after that Rogan podcast that like I think we're going to look back at that as a moment where like it somebody said the quiet parts really, really, really, really loud and got away with it. And now here we are. Yeah, I mean, I think we've definitely seen this culture shift in Silicon Valley. And I think there's always been maybe some underpinning of that and kind of this more libertarian slant that, you know, Silicon Valley tech people have intended to have for a long time.

39:25At the same time, I think you always have to look at like what's going to go on with the actual businesses. And if you look at Meta's business, you know, to tie it back to the TikTok thing, if TikTok is banned, Meta is going to be like almost the only game in town for like these short form videos. Obviously, there's also YouTube shorts. But, you know, that's a TikTok is a huge competitor. And then you think about their Meta is also involved in a anti-monopoly suit from the FTC. And, you know, part of the thinking behind that is that, you know, Meta has become so big and stayed so big because they're one of the only places to go and they've made that, they've made sure that's the case.

40:09Those are the allocations that the FTC would have. So I think, you know, are people really going to leave Facebook and Instagram if they disagree with these policies? Some might, but probably not enough to really warrant Zuckerberg, you know, doing another 180 on his thinking here. Yeah, historically speaking, the answer is no. Some people leave very loudly and most people don't. Exactly. And I think more and more people are getting more and more willing to make that small trade in favor of some of these other things. like hoping that Trump will not try and break your company up, which is a real thing that's sitting in front of Mark Zuckerberg.

40:44Exactly. I just want to say that if the end of 2025 is I have to use Instagram Reels exclusively, then this sucks. I want any outcome that does not end with me having to use Instagram Reels. That's all I want. Yeah, I mean, if the end of 2025 is anything like the end of 2024, I think we don't know what's going to happen this year. Yeah, that's very real. So, all right, Lauren, thank you as always. I suspect we are going to do this oh so many times. And I suspect at some point you and I are going to be in a courtroom together this year. And I'm very much looking forward to it. Can't wait. All right, see ya.

41:18Bye. All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk Kickstarter. We'll be right back.

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43:00Somebody invents a thing, and then it just spreads like wildfire among every other company because things are mostly easy to make now. And I think that's fascinating. But to me, it's the new stuff that I think is most interesting. You see so many booths that are just one person standing there with a thing that they made, And they're there to show it to people, but also to try to get funding and to try to make partnerships. And it is very much a trade show in that sense. And so much of what we see in the world comes from like a person standing at a booth with a thing that they made. And those are the people Kickstarter has always tried to help.

43:36Kickstarter has been around for many years now and has gotten lots of interesting products off the ground. There's a decent chance that a lot of gadgets that you use start on Kickstarter. The Oura Ring, I think, was a Kickstarter. Pebble was a Kickstarter. Lots of things have grown really huge out of Kickstarter. But Kickstarter still feels, to me at least, sort of sketchy. It's a platform not for buying things, but for sort of hopefully flinging your money at something on the off chance that you get money back. And I don't know what that means in this world that we're in now, especially in a world where the TikTok shop has made it so easy for everybody to sell everything and has changed the way that people find and discover and shop for products.

44:19Instagram is doing something very similar. And then you have things like Etsy and Wayfair and all these places. If you want to sell something, you're sort of spoiled for choice. So what does Kickstarter do in this world? What can Kickstarter do for people that it never has before and that no one else is doing now? So Everett Taylor has been the CEO of Kickstarter for a couple of years and has been thinking about all of these questions. And so after spending a week running around looking at weird ideas about the future of technology and people who made things and want to know what to do with them, I just wanted to know, what do those people need?

44:53How do we help those people? How do people's new ideas get out in the world? So that's what Everton and I talked about. But the first question I asked him was basically just, in the year 2025, what is Kickstarter? Listen, to me, Kickstarter plays such a special role within the world and the creator economy. I think, you know, we were using the word creator before a lot of people even saw themselves as creators and entrepreneurs. And I think Kickstarter has been consistent in its ability to be a platform that, for new ideas, new innovation, creativity. But we've expanded so much beyond what people originally thought Kickstarter was.

45:36A lot of times when you thought about Kickstarter in the past, it was like, hey, if I don't have the money, I don't have the resources to create something new or bring something new into the world, then I go to Kickstarter. Kickstarter has evolved to the point where now we still have tons of creators who need to get the money to get things off the ground. But as the company has evolved, now we have billion-dollar multinational corporations, big tech companies, big creators that are well-established, that values the community and the millions of people within the Kickstarter community where it's like, hey, if you want to launch anything new, no matter where you are in your career, where you are in the life cycle as a creator or entrepreneur or as a business, Kickstarter is a valuable community because we have such incredible backers that want to just support new things.

46:34And I think what's beautiful about Kickstarter, especially over the past couple of years, is that we've evolved past just a crowdfunding platform. We're building new products and features, new business lines to support creators throughout the entire life cycle of, you know, their creator journey or their entrepreneurial journey. So it's not just about, hey, you know, before it was like, hey, I'm going to raise some money on Kickstarter. And then it was like, good luck. Now Kickstarter is building this ecosystem of products, features and services that help you throughout the entire life cycle as a creator.

47:07So, okay, I was going to get to this later, but you just brought up one of the things that I most wanted to talk about, which is that shift from, like, I've made a thing and I need some money to make more of them to big established companies launching stuff on Kickstarter. And candidly, I've always wondered if that's a thing Kickstarter, like, secretly hates, that it, like, it, like, breaks the vibe of the platform for, like, a multinational corporation to come show up and try to crowdfund something. Yeah. But there is something about that that continues to work for these companies. And I've never been able to put my finger on exactly why.

47:43And even as we cover it, it's a challenge because like it is that whole gamut of things. And it's like, OK, here is a product that's being launched. It could be either like a dude who made a thing with a 3D printer and now wants to figure out how to go make millions of them. Yeah. But it could also be a company that's done this 20 times and is perfectly reputable. And this thing is going to launch no matter what happens. And I think trying to figure out how Kickstarter sort of can be all of those things is, has just always been tricky for me as somebody like covering these gadgets and talking about them.

48:14Can Kickstarter be all those things to all those people? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think, first of all, I will say this. When larger creators or larger companies with larger audiences come onto the platform, like, it just brings eyes and attention to other things that's on the platform. It grows the community. And so, yes, is there always going to be a subset of people, like, you know, a vocal minority that's like, hey, I don't like that L 'Oreal just dropped something on Kickstarter or whatever, which they dropped something very awesome. But yes, we're going to continue to have that, right?

48:50But the numbers don't lie. The data doesn't lie. Them coming to the platform actually helps smaller creators tremendously because of the visibility that it brings to the platform and to other projects that are currently on the platform. So we see an uptick for other projects when those big creators or those big companies come to the platform. So it's actually helpful. And the one thing that I think is beautiful about our community, specifically for design and technology and new innovation, they're less attached to or they tend to be less attached to who is doing it and more about what it is. Like they just want the coolest, newest, most innovative thing.

49:35They're not so tied to who that person is, which is a little bit different when you get to categories like film and music and more creative categories. Right. And so to me, I think we can we can serve both because we have an audience of people that just want really, really cool products. Right. At the end of the day. it's really interesting yeah and i think one of the questions i think kickstarter has always tried to reckon with is do we treat these things like sort of transactional businesses or do we treat them like content creators right because like i think it's a really complicated balance right because on the one hand it's like i buy uh i i pre-order a cooler i expect that cooler to ship to my house right like that's a pretty straightforward transaction that we're all used to all the time.

50:21But if I back a creator that I like, the thing that I ask for in return is more squishy and nebulous. Like if they don't make anything, that's probably bad, but I don't expect like complete control and specificity over what they're going to make. So like that relationship is just really different. But it also sounds like the way you're seeing it, maybe it's not that different. That maybe even if I'm buying the cooler and I expect the cooler to ship to my house, there is still some of that like content creator personality relationship stuff going on. Yeah, I think it depends on the person. David, I think you're a very rational, sensible human being.

50:59And so you're looking at it that way where there's other people that come, you know, we talk about this all the time at Kickstarter. When you pledge on Kickstarter, it says right there in bold, Kickstarter is not a store, meaning that, hey, this we're not guarantee you're going to get this product. We're not guaranteeing you're going to get something that you like, you know, even close to maybe what you, what you thought you were going to get. This stuff is hard, especially for first time creators and things like that. Over 90 % of creators actually do fulfill. I'm very happy about that. I'm very proud of that number, but it doesn't always happen, right?

51:35There's unforeseen things that happen all the time with creators and entrepreneurs. And so I think there are some backers who are like very just like almost like e-commerce shoppers. Like I see a thing, I see a product I wanted. I don't care if it's John or Sue or whoever doing it. I don't care about the backstory. I just want that product. And then you have some backers who are like really emotionally invested in that creator, their story, what they're trying to do. I love those backers, by the way, because that is, I think that's what's special about Kickstarter, that emotional connection that you have to somebody, because doing something new or putting something new out into the world is a very brave thing to do.

52:20And I think those people that emotionally connect to that, I think that's a very beautiful thing. But we have some people like that. And then we also have some people who just want the product. Neither are wrong, right? But there's just two different experiences on the platform. Well, I agree that neither are wrong, but it does seem like on some level you have to pick one. Because like you said, 90 % of creators ship. It's both a very high number and a very low number, kind of all at the same time. If Samsung only shipped 90 % of the stuff that they launched, that's a problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

52:55And so and I do feel like I think a thing that I've noticed over the years is I think Kickstarter has gone out of its way to act less and less like a shopping mall. But is that has that been deliberate on your side? Like if you had to pick one of those two approaches, it seems like you're much happier on the side of like, be part of a community working on something together rather than show up, buy a thing and don't check on it until it appears at your house in some months. Yeah, but that's because I'm like an empath and I'm a pro empathy person. Like at the end of the day, I'm an entrepreneur myself.

53:32I'm a creator myself. So I understand everything that goes into it, all the unforeseen things that could potentially happen that can derail you. um you know and so for me i just have that level of empathy and understanding there's some projects that don't deliver for a year sometimes two years right like the these things happen then you have some more experienced creators who are like they're cranking these things out like clockwork right like they already have the manufacturing down pat they know what they're doing etc etc they'll launch a kickstarter and will literally release the product that next week right so There's different types of creators on the platform, but I do think what makes Kickstarter fundamentally different from, you know, an Amazon or someone else like that in e-commerce is that these are people who are genuinely trying to get an idea out there.

54:25And I do think that emotional connection and that sense of community and coming together is really special. And I think that's why also the bigger corporations still like to launch on Kickstarter because the people are so passionate and they'll give you that feedback and they'll be real with you. And they'll also, if they feel very happy with what you do, they will be advocates for that product and that brand. I think it first starts with the creator. I know we just talked about the whole thing about like, you know, there are people that treat it more like e-commerce, but I think it always starts with the creator, man.

55:03Like the creator, their story, their passion, their drive, how people resonate with their story and whatever they're trying to produce, but also who they are as a person. I tell people all the time, Kickstarter is no cakewalk. like people will come on the platform and fail because they think oh i just put a project on kickstarter and then people are just going to give me money no you have to have a true go-to-market strategy you gotta have a plan you gotta have great storytelling okay so if you're thinking about it that way right if it if you're sort of putting the creator at the center of it you can i can sort of imagine a world where very quickly you're like okay well the thing we have to do is build like a content platform for those creators to make things outside of being sort of specifically project-based.

55:51And then it's like two more very small steps and now you're TikTok, right? Like it's, it's like, cause this is where everybody has landed, right? Everybody, everybody else that is in this space has come at it from the opposite direction, which is we have given creators a place to build an audience. And then we've given those creators ways to sell stuff. And I think in a lot of ways, that path has sort of ruined those platforms. Like the TikTok shop, at least in my own experience, has made TikTok essentially unusable. It is, I mean, it is, it's like it's a shopping mall now and that's fine for what it is, but it is like unrecognizable from what TikTok was before the shop existed.

56:29But it works. And so what I wonder for you as the ceo is like you've built the second half of that equation already and i can imagine there's a lot of like pressure and good reasons potentially but also maybe psychotic reasons given the competitive landscape to go the other way and basically be like okay how do we become a like creator first platform and do vertical video and like make a thing that gives us all of the power of a creator audience on Kickstarter? Like, is that a path that makes sense? Is that where you're headed? I mean, well, a couple of things that makes Kickstarter unique. Number one, we're not a publicly traded company, right?

57:12We're a private and we're a public benefit corporation. And so some of these things that these, you know, larger tech companies, the pressure of them to make, you know, billions and billions of more revenue, They're always under pressure. We got to get the stock price up. We got to do this. We got to do that. Kickstarter doesn't have that, right? Like, you know, Kickstarter was profitable in year two of its existence. And we've continued to scale and become bigger and more successful. But we've done things our way. And we've done things without the pressures of feeling like we needed to monetize everything.

57:50I'm trying to do the things that are the most genuinely impactful to our audience. In my first couple of years here, I've been hyper-focused on giving creators the tools, the products, and the services that they've been asking for Kickstarter for years. So even before even getting to anything like that, we still have a long road. And also, sometimes you got to understand where your bread is buttered, man. and be really, really great at what you do. With that being said, one of the things that we're hyper-focused on this year is also backer development, right? And developing better products and features for our backers.

58:32We've been very focused on creators, but now we're like, how can we create a more engaging, sticky experience for backers on the platform? So I'm more focused on that than necessarily, you know, trying to turn Kickstarter into a TikTok, like, you know, a vertical platform or anything like that. There's definitely a world in which Kickstarter could sort of choose to be more actively involved in the, like, here's how to help you make stuff process and printing services for people wanting to make content and like that kind of thing. Is that interesting to you? Like, is that a space you think Kickstarter has stuff to do?

59:11That's more interesting to me than Kickstarter becoming like TikTok. Okay. To me personally. I think platforms like TikTok and Instagram and Twitter and all of that have always played a role in Kickstarter, right? In terms of how people market. We now have our own marketing services, performance marketing services called Kickstarter Performance, which is like killing it. We're utilizing those platforms. So those platforms are always going to be more important. But what can we uniquely do? Like, we try to go out there and be better than TikTok. That's really, really hard to do, right? But I think we could be potentially the best at white glove service with manufacturing and stuff like that.

59:54Like, that could be something that we could do. I'm not saying that's what we're going to do. But that's something that we know uniquely our creators need that they might not be able to get elsewhere. Instead of focusing on competing with people at what they absolutely do best, I'd rather focus on what Kickstarter absolutely does best and then filling the gaps for our creators where they need it. Okay. Yeah, what are those gaps? I mean, you see it a lot, and I would assume it varies pretty widely in terms of what folks need. But like, you know, you mentioned wanting to do the stuff creators have been asking for for years.

1:00:32Like, what's your sense of what's at the top of that list? One of them we're doing or we're about to launch, and that's a pledge manager and post campaign tools, right? So, you know, before it was like, you raise money on Kickstarter, and then it was like, congrats, here's your$50 ,000. Good luck. Go out into the world, you know? And now, you know, we're launching these post-campaign tools. Last year, we launched late pledges, which now allows you to, if you raise$50 ,000, but hey, you might have another few hundred people that you might raise another$10 ,000,$20 ,000 over another week if you had it, right?

1:01:08And so now you have late pledges. Now you're going to have pledge management, CRM, all of those things to help you, you know, your taxes, shipping, et cetera, et cetera. So helping people fill the gaps of that post campaign process, which is going to be extremely important. We're going to have, you know, add-ons and cross-sells and all different types of things after a Kickstarter is over that a lot of these entrepreneurs and creators need that we've never been able to provide for them, which I'm really, really excited about. And that's already, we have someone in beta right now, and that's going to be rolling out early part of this year, which we're really, really excited for.

1:01:47The other thing on the other side is pre-launch, right? So we revamped a lot of our pre-launch this past year, but there's so many more things that creators need before actually launching a Kickstarter. To be honest, like, depending on what you do before a Kickstarter will determine how successful your Kickstarter even will be, right? So what can we do more in that pre-launch process of filling those gaps, supporting creators, helping them set realistic goals, maybe it's some of the manufacturing stuff, all of these things, making sure that they have the right pricing, etc., etc., A-B testing.

1:02:27There's a lot of things that we could be doing on the pre-launch side that we're currently not doing that I think that we can provide for creators. And so I think the first steps is pre-launch and post-campaign and continuing to build out a suite of tools and services for creators on both sides. So then you have this kind of loop where it's like pre-launch, Kickstarter, post-campaign, and then come back to pre-launch and continue to launch products. Okay. You're kind of confirming a thing I've always suspected about Kickstarter, which is that the people who aren't like, you know, large companies using it as a kind of marketing pre-sale platform, many of these people are like just people who made a thing and don't know, haven't run businesses like this, don't know how to manage larger quantities of money like this.

1:03:17They're just like, I made a thing and I think people might like it. And they get some money, right? And I think the idea of like needing money to do that stuff is part of it. But it is, I think, maybe a smaller slice of the, like, how to actually successfully accomplish your goals pie than anyone would like it to be. And all the rest of the stuff is, like, less sexy to talk about and less sort of creative and beautiful and artsy. But it's like, that's the stuff that falls apart. And I found this with the tech folks. It's not because the thing didn't work. It's because they couldn't figure out how to ship it.

1:03:49Like, over and over, it's that kind of stuff that falls apart. It's that piece. And now you have these big content creators that have an audience where they can go on Kickstarter today and raise four or five, 10 million or whatever it is. But do they even have the tools and resources to actually make the thing happen, right? And do it successfully. And so those are the gaps that we see that we're trying to fill. And I think we're doing a good job thus far. You mentioned AI. And I'm going to forget to talk about it if I don't bring it back up now. I think, like, I'm a CES right now. You're going to be at CES this week.

1:04:25Literally all anyone wants to talk about is AI. And what you're saying is, right, that, like, some companies are doing interesting things and other companies are just doing old things and calling them AI. And that just is where it is, and that's fine. But I think the potential of AI within a Kickstarter universe is super interesting, right? Like the, if AI is everything it is cracked up to be and like spoiler alert, it isn't. But if it is, it's going to make a lot of things easier for people. It's going to make it easier to design things. It's going to make it easier to build things. It's going to make it easier to do your taxes.

1:05:01It's going to make it easier to like do all the legal paperwork around this stuff. And so I can imagine a world in which you're baking a lot of that stuff into Kickstarter itself to say, these are tools that can automate and simplify some of this stuff. And everybody talks about democratizing everything. AI could do some of that. If I don't have to write code in order to be able to do a project I want to do, the gap between I have an idea and I can sell that idea to people might get much smaller. It also might just be a bunch of snake oil nonsense and may not come to anything. But like you said, you're a company that doesn't have to chase anything that looks like growth just for the sake of something that looks like growth.

1:05:48But where's your head with AI stuff right now? Yeah, first I want to say is that, listen, I'm pro-technology. I'm pro the advancement of technology. I know that you can't just sit there and be scared and fearful of technology. With that being said, I think there's something powerful and beautiful about human-made work and creativity. And Kickstarter wants to be at the forefront of supporting that, right? Supporting creators first and foremost before we even touch AI. And we want to make sure that the creators on our platform feel supported by the work that they do. I see some platforms that are completely just, I mean, I just saw Meta as like creating fake AI influencers.

1:06:35And it's like, dude, do you realize that this is taking away from the hardworking influencers and creators on your platform and why they use it? And you already know where they're going with it. It's like if they can build these creators and make money off of them themselves, but that's hurting your audience. we will never do anything that's going to hurt our community, right? And so we want to make sure there's so many people, so many comic book creators and artists and musicians that are hard at work to create things without the use of AI. And so we want to make sure that we're protecting those people and protecting their hard work first and foremost.

1:07:12If there are ways where we can incorporate AI to help make their lives easier or make creators more successful on the platform, I'm 100 % open to exploring that but I don't want to go too far where it's hurting our community that line's going to get really blurry though like if it's not happening already it's going to happen soon that you're going to get musicians who want to kickstart an album of AI generated music and they can right now they just have to be honest that they've used AI in what they're doing we have an AI policy and we just ask that hey, if you use AI, just say that you used AI, right?

1:07:54And then if you are using other people's work through AI, identify those people and compensate those people when you can. Okay. Yeah, but is there a risk in that for Kickstarter? We talk about this all the time at The Verge, the idea that the internet is just going to be flooded with AI content. You open up like if I'm just wanting to kickstart a new album of AI generated music every day on Kickstarter, that's not going to work, but it's going to make the platform worse. Right. And so I wonder, like, if you get to a point where 80 percent of the stuff on Kickstarter is not interesting to most people because it's AI generated.

1:08:36Yeah. How that changes Kickstarter. I think at the end of the day, our community does a great job of like kind of pointing out what is interesting and what's not. I think if someone came on today and tried to do a bunch of music that was AI generated, they wouldn't be that successful. And they're not going to continue to do that. I think the good thing about Kickstarter is that it almost polices itself in a sense, right? Like if the community isn't for it or supports it, you'll know because you're not getting anything for it. And so I'm very open to see how things evolve. I'm not someone that lives in the black or the white.

1:09:14I very much live in the gray. I just understand right now that human made things and human made work and creativity is at the core of what we do today. and I do understand the power of AI and how that can be supportive to creators implementing that and what they do, but we want to make sure that we don't lose sight of what really makes Kickstarter special at the end of the day. Okay. This might be a stupid realization to be having this far into this conversation, but it also strikes me that starting the whole thing with an exchange of money changes the dynamic in a really useful way. Like, I think about the AI music that's suddenly all over Spotify and nobody really likes it.

1:09:57I wouldn't, like nobody's seeking it out. It's not super popular, but there's so much of it that at volume, it still works, right? Like if I can put out so much music that hardly any of it has to be successful in order for it to still be an in aggregate success for me. But that's a totally different relationship than you have paid me for a thing. And I feel like there's, I can't imagine the path to get to that kind of success when first you have to pay me for a thing. And what I said before, yes, we do have people that are very much like, hey, I am just getting a thing. They're thinking they're, we never use the words buy, right?

1:10:36We don't see ourselves as a marketplace in that way that are using that. But still at the core, the majority of our audience is wanting to support creators, new things, new products. There is this like emotional component to it. And so I think people who want to behave in that way on the platform are not going to find a lot of success. Okay. All right. Last thing, and then we'll let you go. I've kept you a long time here. What do you tell creators about how to talk to their audience that way? Because I think every bad experience I hear about that somebody has on Kickstarter is about being ghosted in one way or another.

1:11:14Like the experience of I backed a thing and it didn't work is frustrating. but I backed a thing and then they disappeared is worse and feels bad. And like, that's the thing that breaks the thing. And so, yeah, I mean, I assume this is a thing you spend a lot of time thinking and talking about, but I am curious, like, as you talk to these folks who are wanting to build that relationship, what do you tell them? Well, first and foremost, they know what they're doing, right? Like, let's like, these are adults, these are creators, these are entrepreneurs. and what I'm very excited about and we already started rolling it out is we're going after these potentially fraudulent creators or these ghosting creators.

1:11:56Never in Kickstarter's history have we done that. We've kind of had this like, hey, Kickstarter's not a store. There's no guarantee that you're going to get the thing. I always compare it to the chat GPT thing where it's like, chat GPT might lie to you and it's like a total abdication of responsibility to say that. 100%. And to me, I just like, listen, David, I stand on business, man. And like, I come from Southside, Richmond. I'm all about holding people accountable and making sure that we do the right thing. So this year, we're rolling out new things where we're going to be going after these creators.

1:12:34We're going to be banning them from the platform. We're going to be communicating back to their backers, letting them know that we're holding them accountable. We're going to be putting people in collections, going after the money to get it back for our backers. Like we're not playing any more games anymore. And so, yes, we can go and go to every creator and be like, hey, make sure you're communicating with your audience. Do the right thing. But we both know that people that aren't trying to do the right thing is going to ignore that. The one place where I do find empathy and like where we need to help more creators are those like first time creators that they failed and they're like under the weight of failure.

1:13:15Right. And I don't want to go after them. I just want to make sure they get to the point where they can at least communicate that to their audience. I think that's going to be so important because there are some creators that just under the weight of the pressure, they're not trying to go, but they have that social anxiety of like, I don't know what to do. And I really empathize with that, but they still have to go and communicate with that audience. And so the balance of helping those creators, but also actually going after the creators that are being fraudulent. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the folks who give it a real try and then just kind of admit defeat, I think you're right that Kickstarter is unusual as a place in that it has a lot of space for those people.

1:14:00Yeah. Like that is that is a thing that is part of the system. Yeah. It's the people who just take your money and run. Yep. That that that's the threat to everybody. And I want to say that that very, very, very rarely happens. I would say most of the time it is people who, under the weight of pressure, just don't feel like that they can, you know, say what happened or what went wrong and all of those things. And, you know, we understand that. But we're here to support people. And that's part of the backer work that we're doing, regaining trust within that backer network of saying, hey, we're actually going after those guys.

1:14:37That's why I'm so excited that you brought it up. I can't wait. Yeah, it's time to go to work. All right. I should let you go, but thank you for doing this. This is so much fun. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much, David. All right, we got to take one more break, and then we're going to come back and take a question from the Verge Cast Hotline. We'll be right back.

1:15:07mobile get the new iphone 17 pro on them it's designed to be the most powerful iphone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system impressive let me try at t-mobile you can save up to 20 percent versus the other big guys you heard them t-mobile is the best place to get the new iphone 17 pro on us with eligible traded in any condition check them out to see how much you can save versus the other big guys at t-mobile.com slash switch all right we're back let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is vergecastattheverge.com. We love all of your questions. We try to answer at least one on the show every week, but I have some ideas about how to do even more than that.

1:15:47This year, we're also working on some big stuff that started as hotline questions. Please keep hitting up the hotline with all of your weirdest questions. It's my favorite thing. This week's question is about passwords, or I guess more specifically, not passwords. Listen to this. Hi, David slash Vergecast. My name is John in New York, and I have a question about sort of related to the Verge creating a subscription and more about sign-ins on websites. A lot of websites I feel like these days do prompt you to sign in via a link in an email. I sort of understand that, but what is the reason websites are moving, it seems like, in that direction more?

1:16:37Is it because people can't do passwords properly? It seems like a lot of websites are just removing the ability to do passwords at all. Is that the way of the future? Just wondering what the process there is. Okay, so this question actually sent me down a really interesting rabbit hole, because I frankly hate Magic Links as a login mechanism. Basically, the way Magic Links work, if you don't know, is you go to log into something, you type in your username, and you hit submit. And instead of popping up another field that's like, hey, what's your password? It says, you know, we've sent you an email, go click on the link in your email.

1:17:16So you go, you open your email, you get an email from whoever you're trying to log into that says, click this link to finish your login or something like that. You click that link and then it opens up to the thing that you were reading. This is, in theory, fine, right? I think that that idea works. And I'll tell you the reason people do it. Just to directly answer the question, the reason for magic links is because they are better than passwords. I think everything is better than passwords. And one thing that we've seen over time is there is a big push away from if I run a website storing your passwords.

1:17:50I just don't want them anymore. The folks at 404 Media wrote a really great post about this a couple of weeks ago about why they use Magic Links. And the thrust of it is essentially we don't want your passwords because as soon as you store somebody's passwords, you become a security risk. And because most people have bad password hygiene, they reuse passwords, they use bad passwords. If I leak your password to my website, there is a surprisingly good chance that what actually happened is I just leaked the password to your email and your bank account and everything else. So essentially, what a lot of companies are starting to say is just, we do not want your password.

1:18:28We don't want your data at all. This is a thing you hear from a lot of privacy-based companies, like DuckDuckGo has been saying this for years, is their privacy policy is just to not have any data at all. Because the less you collect, the fewer risks there are for that data. And passwords, I think, are the number one security vector there. And so that is one big reason to use MagicLinks. It offloads all of the worry about security to just as long as my email address is secure, which is my job as a person, it will work. This system stays secure as long as my email stays secure. And I think for us as people, that's a reasonable trade, right?

1:19:08Like it is just true that if your email address gets compromised, you're hosed. I hate to put it in quite those terms, but if you do one single thing on Earth that is good for you on the Internet, it is have a complicated and two-factor backed and unique password for your email. That's just do it or else you are just on borrowed time until something truly terrible happens. Okay, so anyway, the upside of MagicLinks is that it offloads a lot of that process. The downside of Magic Links is that it's kind of crappy user experience, right? So in a certain world, like if I'm sitting at my computer, for instance, and it's easy for me to switch from the tab of the website to the tab of my email, that's relatively simple, right?

1:19:55And then I click the link and it opens the same thing in another tab and I'm back to where I was. That's slightly annoying just because it's a bunch of tab switching and clicking and it opens in another tab. So now I have two tabs of the same thing, one where I'm not logged in and one where I am. That's slightly messy, but is, I would say, broadly fine. Where this really breaks down for me, at least as a user, is on mobile, right? Where I log into something, I go to my email, which involves usually, you know, closing and opening another app or opening the multitasking thing and you swipe for a while.

1:20:28That takes a minute. And then clicking the link. And then when I click that link, God only knows where it goes. This is the problem, right? On mobile, especially on iOS, which is just awful about this, you have in-app browsers, you have Safari, which a lot of apps just want to open by default, and then you have whatever you've picked as your default browser. So when you are in a place reading an article and you want to log in and read that article, you get the magic link and it may or may not open in the place where you were originally reading that article. This is a platform mess and it is everyone's fault, especially Apple's for the way that it handles web browsers.

1:21:06But what it means is that you're just not in the place that you expect to be and logged in in the places you expect to be logged in. I have a theory that lots of people who hate subscriptions, one thing we've heard, frankly, on The Verge is that staying logged in is a challenge. And a lot of that comes from the fact that when you use a browser on iOS, again, in particular, you're actually using several different kinds of browsers that do not talk to each other. You're not just using like the iPhone browser. Sometimes you're in Safari. Sometimes you might be in Chrome. Sometimes you're in an in-app browser.

1:21:38Sometimes you're in a different in-app browser. It's a mess. My one thing, by the way, is try your very best not to use in-app browsers. Set the browser you want as the default and then get in the habit of like pressing the button and saying open in default browser. It is annoying to do that extra step every time you open a web page, but it makes all the login and magic linky stuff a little bit easier. So all of this is to say, I've been asking around a little bit, and I don't think anyone agrees that magic links are perfect. There's no sort of magically great thing about them, but they do work, right?

1:22:16You probably have access to your email just about everywhere. There's a chance that you have access to email more places than you have access to your passwords. Most people, again, have bad password hygienes and have them like written down on a sticky note on their desk, there's a good chance your email is more accessible to you than the list of passwords that you have. It also means things like when you're on a new device that you've never used before, you can use the magic link and still be relatively secure without risks of things like, you know, keyboard capture and all that stuff. It's a better, simpler system with fewer problems than just asking people to type in their password all the time.

1:22:55All of that is true. But when I talk to people about this, they say what we should have is something more like passkeys. Passkeys are really interesting, and we've talked about them a bunch on the show. But passkeys basically intercept this whole system and just let you declare yourself to a website with yourself. You use the biometric security on your phone to log into websites. I would argue that is the correct answer, and that is absolutely how it should work. None of these systems are perfect, but they're very good, and I think they're great. You can also solve a lot of these problems by just having good password hygiene, right?

1:23:31Like if you have a password manager, you can solve some of this problem, particularly the user experience part of the problem, by just having these things autofill themselves more easily. Then you don't have to know your passwords. You can have your passwords everywhere. It doesn't solve the specific security risks of just inputting passwords, which are an inherent security risk. But if you have, you know, unique, complicated passwords across every website that you use, the worries about a specific one being leaked at least go down. There are, I should also say, tradeoffs to the MagicLink thing with security.

1:24:07One other thing you see is the codes that people get sent in emails or the codes that you can get sent by text message, like six-digit code that you use to log into stuff. Those are also better than asking people to input passwords. but they take time too. SMS in particular has its own security risks. You run the risk of having issues if you have service problems. Look, none of these systems are perfect. This is the thing I keep hearing from people is like, oh, we really should have solved passwords by now. And pass keys are probably the closest thing we've ever come up with to solving passwords.

1:24:42But for right now, we have this big kind of mealy mess of different ways to do better than having you just type your password into a text field. And everybody agrees that that is the single worst thing you can possibly do. So Magic Links, they're not great. They're not anybody's favorite thing, but they are definitely unequivocally better than making people type in their passwords. And for that reason alone, I will keep using them. I will get annoyed every time I have to use them on 404 and other places, but I will keep using them. I hope that helps. passwords are a mess is essentially where it lands.

1:25:20None of this is good. Use pass keys when you can. All right, that is it for the VergeCast today. Thank you to everybody who came on the show. And thank you as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about at theverge.com. We're covering all of the run-up to the will-they-won't-they TikTok ban really aggressively. So keep it locked on the website. I think there's a lot left to happen in the next five days. So keep it locked. Let us know what you think. I'd love to hear all of your thoughts on whether it should be banned, shouldn't be banned. I know this is the thing we've been talking about for literally years at this point, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

1:25:54And I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions on everything. Email us, VergeCast at TheVerge.com. Call the hotline 866-VERGE-11. We absolutely love hearing from you. We are going to do even more hotline stuff in 2025 than we did last year. So please keep all of your questions coming. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poore, and Eric Gomez. Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neal and I will be back on Friday to talk about presumably the TikTok ban, plus everything going on at Meta, all of the open AI stuff, and lots more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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