Zuckerberg’s Capitulation, Rabbit Holes and the War on Attention
01:03:42 Share

Usually, like, podcasts have, like, a little spiel that they do. I know, but that gets so... I find that corny sometimes. I know, but, you know, being shameless is how you build a media brand and being repetitive and predictable. Okay, hit it up. Mind if I call you Al? What's happening? Hit it, Alex. Hit it, Alex.

Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Alex Schleifer. And I'm Troy Young. I'm Brian Morrissey.

Good to be back. I had another norovirus. I don't know if it was another norovirus from the PVA virus, but I'm feeling a lot better. Thanks for asking. We got a lot to cover this week. We should also send our, you know, just acknowledge what the devastation that's happening in LA right now, because it is beyond imagination. It is. It's the pictures coming out of that, the video is, it's pretty shocking. And

Yeah. Unfortunately, it probably will become a bit of the norm for a lot of areas. And blame games have started. It's been, I mean, we're going to get into this, but like if you open X,

this just don't if you open x just it's not a good like just the the blames that like there's a vc who is is are they blaming dei are they i got blamed absolutely but can we just start we just start by just thinking for a minute about these people about to hit the earth just just take a minute just take a minute people that i know people that you know

People that have nowhere to go, rich people, poor people. I have good friends that live there. I have, I just talked to one of them yesterday and they lost their house. You know, we're thinking about these folks. So it's terrible. You know, I live in a, I live in a fire zone here. We,

We also had like in Northern California, the wettest winter. So it's surreal to see Southern California on fire. But, you know, we had some close calls and just that fear of like not knowing whether you should evacuate and then actually seeing the flames, you know, over the horizon. It's terrifying, some of these videos. And it's so populated there. It's just crazy. But yeah, the discourse has been as expected online.

on X, terrible. But let's not start there. Let's start with Mark Zuckerberg's turnabout on moderation and or pandering to the incoming administration. This week, he announced a wholesale dismantling of content moderation apparatus that he put in place. Let's not forget it, although he'd like us to forget it. In 2017, in response to the uproar over Facebook's role in Trump's first election, Russian interference. Remember Cambridge Analytica that supposedly swung the election?

He threw mainstream media under the bus. He threw Biden under the bus. It was pretty clear that this was an attempt that we've seen pretty much across the board to bend the knee, I think, to the current vibe. Instead of the army of content moderators, he's basically adopting community notes. He's even calling it community notes. We've seen this. Every tech company and leader has in their own way

They've all accommodated themselves. They've all donated either through the company itself or individually to the inauguration. Trump is swimming in money. I read something in the New York Times that they now can't even give million-dollar donors any real perks. They've run out of perks. They just said they've got fire codes.

So I'm kind of reminded of one time I went on a walking safari in South Africa and we came across a lion on a hill and it charged at us. But then the guide fired warning shots in front of the lion and it sort of skidded sideways and retreated because it understood that it came across some lion.

something that was more powerful than it. So I think a couple ways for us to look at this. I mean, one, maybe Masterstroke by Zuckerberg as a business operator. I mean, he's done this before. He's ruthless and he is shameless. Or it's just more cravenness and it's probably a little bit of both. Troy, you want to give us your insights? Well,

I wonder if it will really matter. That's what I'm curious to find out. It's sort of like if you read the sort of sadder commentary from...

The endlessly pessimistic Ryan Broderick from Garbage Day. Well, he spends a lot of time online, so I can understand that. Too much. He's like sad Ryan, but it's like this will turn Facebook to even more of a kind of reality bending bullshit vortex than it seemingly is today. And that...

ultimately will as a society be worse off because of this, because we don't have, you know, armies of, you know, sort of lightly engaged fact checkers, you know, deciding what content goes on Facebook or not. I think in the end, you know, if you look at the information space broadly, you can kind of find places to say whatever you want and not be censored. And it somehow all manages to kind of,

you know, make it, make itself available to people, whether it's on X or Reddit or somebody's sub stack. So I think in the end it'll, it'll be a nothing thing. And if it is, if it does overwhelm the feeds on Facebook, then Zuckerberg will pivot again. What's amazing about that guy. I mean, more broadly is that he just moves fast and he sees a change in the market and he's done it 10 times and,

And he pushes that company to the next thing, whether, you know, that was a creation of, you know, the newsfeed in the early days or building the app platform or moving to mobile or copying TikTok with reels or rebranding to meta. He copied Snapchat. He copied Snapchat.

Okay. And now it's, it's, we're going to change moderation. I'm going to put a new face on our public affairs group by getting rid of Clegg. And, you know, this is, this is a Facebook for, for a new administration and a new political reality and let's go. So that's why he's very successful. And that's my take. Okay. Alex, is the sky falling without the content moderators? Yeah.

I don't know. Switching over to community notes is fine. I think the announcement was...

I don't know. It felt to me like he was throwing a bunch of people he hired under the bus by calling them biased and political and saying, we're going to move to Texas. Yeah, that was a weird one. We got to move out of California. I mean, it's so obvious that he has always been shameless. I don't like him. I was told not to talk about Facebook at my last job because I had a tendency to say things that were pretty negative about the company. I haven't changed my mind. I think he's...

He's parasitic the way he responds to things. And that's fine. That's how he runs his business. Something successful. He had luck once, managed to build a big company, surrounded himself by people who allowed the company to grow. And now he just looks at what's happening in the market and adjusts to it. He's pretty shameless. Like I think, you know, like just the way he...

The way that video kind of played out showed like he was pandering and also showed like the administration is open for business, guys. Everything's transactional now. And these giant tech companies are very comfortable being transactional. So it's just going to happen. And I think Trump administration is going to be pretty cheap. Like, hey, fuck, we can get rid of a thousand people, a headache.

Alex, could you tone down the anti-Facebook rhetoric, please?

No, fuck him. I talked to a lot of people who are at Facebook, who I don't think would have had any trouble with a shift away from human moderation to different systems. But look at their leader with a little bit of disdain at the moment. I don't think that changes anything for him. I think people...

You know, people need the job and they're going to work there and it's going to be fine. But yeah, I just felt like the whole thing felt kind of nasty to me. Yeah. But beyond the cravenness, let's leave aside the cravenness for a moment. I mean, beyond the cravenness, Elon is a genius. Beyond the cravenness, this is fine. The whole content moderation thing and the idea, like platforms have been an impossible position and they were put in an impossible position. Maybe they put themselves in that of adjudicating content.

you know, what speech was misinformation. And ultimately, you are going to have false positives without a doubt if you're you're just going to. Right. And so I think the question ends up being, like, how do you get out of playing the arbiter? Now, they tried to outsource that in some ways, a bunch of different fact checking organizations who he then flew through under the bus as being biased and left

leaning etc and maybe i don't know but it's it's it's simple like they they they keep telling i mean in his in his little speech he talked about how the i'm surprised you're not more upset brian because he talked about how the the press was pushing them to do that the press the media yeah well the press is always i mean come on you or you attack the media all the time so i'm used to it

And, but, but yeah, sure. You know, poor, poor little Facebook was forced by the media to do. I know, but let's leave aside his. We know the guy at this point. Here's the only play that happens. It's all about section 230, right? So the last administration threatens them with section 230 by saying, Hey, you can't have things that are dangerous on your platform. Otherwise you might lose section 230. Wouldn't it be like,

a problem for you to lose the one thing that allows you to have pretty much infinite cash flow through the creation of content by millions of people on your platform. Now, the new FTC chair comes in and says, you know what? With all your censorship, and we know what they mean by censorship, it would be a shame that you lost Section 230. That is their one thing that they don't want to have.

So just to recap, Section 230 is the law that basically gives them a pass for being responsible for the things that are posted on their platform. I mean, I'm surprised the media is not more upset about that. It's the thing that allows these platforms to be a media platform without...

any of the liabilities that traditional media publishers have. Just to be clear, the media has been complaining about this forever. Going back to calling Google, Google's a publisher, Google's a publisher. They should have done something because apparently they control what Facebook does. Nobody listens to the media. Despite the media pulling the strings apparently in all of society, despite it being in terminal decline, it isn't actually that powerful.

It turns out. It's all about 230. You know, like, it's all about 230. Shit, you're going to take 230 away? So we'll put your friend Dana White on the board of Meta. And Joel Kaplan, who Troy had mentioned before, who was a longtime Republican operative, who has replaced Nick Clegg as their head of public policy and

I assume he will be their ambassador to the administration. I think it was interesting. If Bernie got elected, I think we would have had a speech from Zuckerberg, how he's forcing everyone into unions. Like 230 is such a powerful thing. If they lose 230, they lose everything.

Right. And, and two 30 has been the get out of jail free, like, you know, zoom, zoom, let's make as much money as possible. All of these companies have like, like no liability. It means that it's why Google is allowed to like advertise shit to children under the guys on YouTube, under the guys of like, well, it's just community content like that. I'm not following, but you guys would, would admit that as Brian said, I think importantly, um,

that the idea that platforms are put in a position where they have to decide whether content should be viewed or not is a troubling place for them to be.

to be. Why? Because they have a job? Because they have some sort of responsibility? No, because there's a lot of gray, Alex. It would be so hard. These platforms are always so great at saying, you know what, like, we'd like to figure out a way for not letting children log in to Instagram, but it's so difficult. It's so difficult. Meanwhile, we're talking about, we're building...

you know, generalized artificial intelligence by building, you know, by, oh, let's, let's reignite nuclear power plants. So we have power for this shit, but all this other stuff is too difficult. Physics is easier than this stuff. Yes, definitely. Bullshit.

It is. Bullshit. They should be liable. Because it's cut and dry. I mean, like, physics is physics. Like, whereas, you know, whether the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation or not is, like, that's hard to figure out. And I don't, like, know. Or if something that's distasteful to some people should be taken off the platform when it's potentially illegal.

You know, some other people see it as legitimate conversation. And absolutely. And this is why Elon did the right thing by moving to community platforms and then completely snuff out the... This isn't about Elon, man. This isn't... I'm not talking... He said a nice thing about Elon. Well, no, he said that he went to community notes and then he censors personally, which is hypocritical. Yes.

It's hyper-hyper-credit. All these companies are hyper-hyper-credit. It's all about sections 230, though. Like I said, I don't mind that they have decided to move from human moderation to community moderation because human moderation is untenable. Yes, we get it. It's difficult. People are biased. Where the political winds are turning can stifle communication, and these platforms want to remain as open as possible.

However, they're all hypocritical. The main thing that they want to keep is an ability to put content in front of people with as little liability as possible. They want to maintain 230. They will do whatever they need to. And 230 is the leverage. Underneath of it all, guys, is this staggering truth, which I'm reminded of from the earliest days. I remember when we were talking about

you know, Facebook in the early aughts and how it was emerging, you know, from the campus of Harvard into being a generalized social network and taking on my space and all of this. And the dialogue at the time was, yeah, but you know, nobody wants to advertise on social networking and can this be a business? And now we're in this kind of gilded age period where, you know, a handful of people, not unlike Carnegie Rockefeller and, you know, JP Morgan, um,

you know, control huge swaths of the economy, which is really just tech through systems that have no liability or content costs and make just staggering amounts of money. And the amount of money made by a handful of companies, which, you know, gives them the ability to, you know, really kind of not just influence,

you know, politics, but kind of reshapes society is amazing to me. It's amazing. The top, the magnificent seven in the stock market have a larger market cap than I think 200 of the companies that follow them, right? 400. Well, then 200 did larger, but it's 30% of the index. Okay. So, and here's the thing when, you know, if we're talking about Zuckerberg specifically, because I think we can be very impressed with him as a leader and

But I think once that thing had wheels, right? And once Facebook had wheels and created the amount of revenue, free cash flow that it did, it allowed him to make so many mistakes. Like we're saying, yeah, he bought Instagram. He could have built Instagram. He didn't build Instagram. These companies are...

Their safety net is so huge that they can, with otherwise very mediocre strategic decision, decide to spend $20 billion on the metaverse and then go say, whoops, now where I am. Everybody goes like, man, you're so smart. No other companies could spend $20 billion and burn them and survive. I think it's like $20 billion a year.

A year, right? And so then we look at these people like as geniuses, as if the same way we look at somebody that inherited like, you know, $200 million as a business genius when you managed to make a successful bagel shop. Like,

It's impossible to make mistakes. It's impossible to fail for these companies. Yeah, I compare it to the United States. Like we can, as a country, the United States can make so many errors and screw up so many things. But because of all of the advantages of geography, of the military, of scaling, it's going to be fine. Like Belgium cannot make these kind of mistakes. And then we talk about these people like they're fucking geniuses, you know, and they're not.

They're probably pretty smart. They're pretty smart, Alex. Okay, so that I didn't realize. Is this because maybe he's like cheating at the, Elon Musk is cheating at video gaming? I wasn't able to open that link in Apple News. No, of course he's cheating. But like, I don't even care about Elon Musk anymore. I mean, that guy's, I think even Trump's getting tired of him. But how did he get so good at that game, Alex? Give us some insight. It is unhealthy when companies are so big that they're like unable to get any repercussions for the mistakes they make.

And on top of that, these individuals are too, these people are too powerful. And it's very worrying when you get into an environment where your political apparatus is, you know, is like, is ready to trade because these people have infinite money. And I don't want to live in a technocratic, like,

Thing that's run by people who actually now believe their own bullshit and think that luck had nothing to do with their success. So like, I'm worried about that stuff. And let's see, you know, at least hopefully it just lasts four years and just like brace ourselves. I don't think it's going to last only four years. I think that's the new reality. I mean, the, the finance industry,

industry is what, like 15% of the economy or so? I mean, they're a power center. Goldman Sachs was called government Sachs because of the revolving door. You go from Goldman Sachs to the Treasury Department, bounce back, and you're seeing something similar happen with tech now and being embedded in Washington. I don't think that's going to change. I mean, when you become a massive

power center, you're going to interact with the government, which is the ultimate power center. I mean, that's...

That's not going to change. I don't care who is sitting in the White House. You know, tech is... I don't see... I mean, AI is not going to make this sort of less important, right? No, I think what I mean by change is that I think we're likely going into a cycle where 90% of the population just votes whoever tells them they can fix the economy for them and...

neither can. So we're going to flip-flop between like, you know, the different parties. And so in four years, there'll just be a different set of, of pandering that happens. And, you know, I think, I think that's what we're going to see right now. It's just,

It feels like this administration is just going to be very, very open for business. So like, you know, Fartcoin is up. That's great. I don't know if you bought Fart. Have you bought Fartcoin early? I did not. That's unfortunate. You could be a millionaire. Guys, can we move on, please? This is not where I want this to. I mean, this is not a political podcast. Okay. This is not political. I'm not talking about anything political. Well, it's like grievance. Like, let's just move on. Let's talk about media.

No, let's talk about tech. We are talking about media. Let's talk about CES. I missed CES this year. I had been the last few years, but didn't have anything going on. Decided to skip it, which is a weird thing. The sort of media world goes to CES, but doesn't really engage in the tech part. They just have a lot of meetings with advertisers and whatnot.

But anyway, at CES, NVIDIA revealed some interesting announcements around a personal supercomputer running its new Blackwell chip, as well as a new partnership involving some kind of driverless truck technology. Jensen, you'd pointed this out, Troy, that Jensen...

Huang is like an old school Steve Jobs because there isn't, like of all the like sort of tech CEOs, none of them have the showmanship of Steve Jobs. I mean, Musk is sort of stuttering and awkward. Zuckerberg is still kind of wooden and doesn't seem human. Tim Cook is just Tim Cook, the Google guy. He's from McKinsey, right?

But he's a very interesting tech CEO type. He's got the leather jacket look. He signed that- Alligator for CES. He had an alligator one. Oh, he had an alligator one? Oh, that's cool. That's part of the vibe shift, I guess. He signed that boob one time. And he also seems to kind of like an agreeable dad type versus the kind of trying too hard cage fighting approach taken by some of these other CEOs. I'm interested, Alex, in your-

First of all, what do you think about these announcements that made? Do they matter at all? After the announcements, NVIDIA's shares were down 6.2%. And some of that is just one analyst said that, yeah, they were technically interesting announcements. But at the same time, investors were looking for more progress on this announcement.

Blackwell and when the next generation GPU platform, Rubin, will be rolled out.

I think what comes across with him is that he actually is like deeply knowledgeable and loves what the company does. I think what we're losing with Apple's presentation specifically with Tim Cook is that the passion doesn't feel real. And I think the production around it makes it feel even more fake. But having this dude on stage for two hours talk about chips is...

It's more interesting because he seems genuinely passionate about it. And sure, he's charismatic, but a lot of these other dudes are. It just feels like he's somebody – he is like an integral part of that company rather than just an executive. Yeah, that feels right. That feels right. But Alex, any insight on –

you know, being able to put the entire internet and a huge LLM on a supercomputer that you can put on, you know, on your desktop. Is that important? I mean, yes. Any of these tools that kind of allow us to do more things with the, with these LLMs is going to allow us to start seeing the creation of like tools and products that are actually useful. I think we need, you know, a couple of years to kind of,

out what can be built. But, you know, my thing has always been that like right now, I mean, we're mostly just like tapping straight into the chatbot, into the LLMs via chatbot. And we're not really seeing exciting tools come in. I think Brian, you were talking about that Google research thing as being kind of like, well, that's an expression of these types of things. And, and,

We don't know what happens when you can actually have something run locally, like in a business or in a home or whatever. Well, maybe I just challenge you a little bit that the tools, you know, maybe applications of them in narrower ways haven't manifest yet. But Brian's example that...

But Gemini's research tool could string together queries and match it with a really deep web search, could then bring back basically a research report in five minutes is pretty impressive tool to me.

No, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying these are the types of tools that we're seeing. It's some of the first tools that we're seeing that have some real use outside of like, well, it's kind of easier to just get to the chatbot. I think a lot of the other stuff we're seeing, including in iOS and everything like that, is just like, summarize this shit. And here, I'm going to help you respond to that message. Or ask me a question with my AI agent. All of these things feel like early internet

experiments that you know didn't really hit until we started getting stuff like google maps it doesn't feel like there's been some like killer like product like oh my god I must have this this has changed my life what about that thing I said this morning drip drip

The AI male pleasuring device. I mean, I haven't tried it. Water. Yeah. It was at CES. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's always one of those every year. That's the killer app. Well, you, you can connect it to video, I think. And so it's, it's like, you know, it watches your video and changes the rhythm of it. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Yes. I mean, that's, I, you know what I think the nice thing about that is finally technology doing something against the loneliness epidemic. Yeah.

Yeah. Which is great. Yeah. I just wonder where you put that when you're done with it. Do you put it like near the small appliances in the kitchen? Well, apparently it's not waterproof, so you can't put it in your dishwasher. But you didn't want to talk about politics. So I guess... No, but Alex, I had another question. These are serious questions that are coming up now. No, but let me just finish. Just before you start with your other question...

because it's hard to come up with answers about this is the type of stuff that we're going to start seeing. I'm definitely interested in having kind of like an LLM that can run in my house. That sounds interesting as an experiment. But the example I always give is like, you know,

We talked about the Web 2.0 revolution, right? Which was like a very technically kind of interesting thing, but it didn't really provide a ton of value. But the main thing it allowed you to do is update websites in real time using JavaScript. So now your websites could behave a little bit more like applications.

And at first, you would see just like interesting things happening, but it would really only satisfy kind of nerds like me and say like, oh, this is pretty cool. Until we started getting, and it took us a while to figure out what that looked like, but we started getting things like Google Maps and Google Docs and it kind of both changed the way people thought about how application could be delivered over the web. But then things like Google Maps

allowed for the creation of things like Uber or Airbnb. And you kind of created these like brand new types of tools that had societal effects, right? Like not just like, oh, this is a slightly cooler version of the thing I used to use, but this is like something I couldn't do before. I couldn't be on the street, press a button and the car comes, you know? And of course you needed a collection of technologies like the phone and GPS and everything like that. But so right now, when you're thinking about AI, it is one of, it is part of that,

you know, part of that core technology, we're going to have to see kind of like technologies that, and products that exist around side of it so that people can start building on top of it. So anything that's released like that, that allows it to be more portable, more localized, doesn't allow it to run without having to be kind of constantly connected to the LLM reduces the cost, open sources, these things, it's just going to open up the field for these new type of tools. And I don't think we've yet seen a tool that is the, uh,

uber of the LLM era. We haven't seen the tool that allows us to do things, something that's completely different, a completely different behavior, rather than stuff that we used to do in a slightly different fashion. That was good context because it was

It reminded me of two small things. One is the NVIDIA announcement of, I think it's called Cosmos, which allows the robots to essentially train off of images and real world information, which allows you to see a time when actually robots could be deployed, suck up all the information as to how to navigate the world and be useful. And that's essentially what's happening with NVIDIA.

with self-driving cars using sensors to map the world and therefore become autonomous. So that was the Cosmo announcement. The other one, Alex, I thought was cool was to me, it's sort of like, oh, look, the Alex features coming to my television. And it was on a Google TV where you could just say, summarize the news. And

And it would go out, I suppose, to YouTube and to the web and to, I guess, any other professional source, give you a couple bullet points on your TV and point you at a couple of clips, which would prevent you from having to watch baby news.

And zero, you know, get you, you know, it's actually... For the new listeners, baby news is what I call things like CNN and... So we did like stitch together, does it like stitch together like clips? So it just takes like the video clips? I mean, I think eventually, Brian, but I think at first it's like a couple of bullet points and directs you to a clip on YouTube. But what struck me from that is...

When you start seeing all the things that have hijacked publishers via aggregation on the Internet, right, things that have made it harder for you to, you know, control your surface area as a publisher and you see that coming for television, that's when media is really going to freak out.

Yeah, well, that's when the lawyers are going to get involved. Yeah, well, there's a lot more money involved. Mess with the tax people, that's fine. But when you start to get closer to Hollywood... I mean, good luck with this administration and the advisors they've got on. Because I think that similarly as Section 230 being kind of the brittle foundation of these massive social networks, IP law is the brittle foundation for all these LLM. Because, you know, they've been stealing shit.

And they're continuously stealing that shit. It's essentially Napster. But what if Napster just had all the music and changed it enough so it didn't sound like the original song? And if that legal battle doesn't get, you know, won in the next couple of years, it's going to be very hard to untangle. So, I mean, I keep hearing the media say, well, you know, wait till our lawyers hear of this. What's happening? I don't hear that, though, honestly. Yeah.

You can ask Google, the new VO video generator from Google, which has likely been trained on YouTube. You can tell it to generate a humanoid sponge that lives under the sea. And it will generate SpongeBob SquarePants. It won't generate a weird humanoid. It will generate SpongeBob SquarePants. So that means it's trained entirely on copyrighted, in part on copyrighted data. And there's nothing nobody's doing about it.

So I think any media that's on the internet, it can be behind a paywall or whatever. With new agents, you'll just type in your paywall information. All that stuff can be clipped and reformatted and brought back. And I don't think there's any legal way to bounce out of that. So I want to move on to rabbit holes and attention spans. This is a good reminder that everyone should sign up for the companion, the PVA newsletter companion that has been revived. So

It's a work in progress. I think it's coming along pretty well. I like it, actually. Yeah, it's a conversational format. We take five topics, mostly from what we're discussing here in the podcast, and we go back and forth on it. And there's also, what is it, anonymous banker? Yeah, we like bankers because they're sort of like real estate agents that went to Ivy League's.

And no offense to any bankers listening. They're enterprising, right? They got to go hustle. They got to find deals. They got to find opportunities. They got to make opportunities. And so we know some bankers and one of them said, I'd like to contribute to your newsletter and we'll just do it anonymously. And he actually, better than Alex, dutifully sends his copy over each week. And this week he made a

a comment about the consolidation that's happening around sort of influencer affiliate marketplaces with the most recent acquisition of what's the company called? Maverly?

Yeah, Maverly was acquired by a company called Later. But essentially, as ad tech has become... So, made up names. Are those real companies? Yes, they're real companies. As ad tech has become less interesting with the decline of the web page, the influence, get an influencer to promote a product and...

pay them on performance and have a marketplace that stacks up influencers on one side or creators on one side and filters in offers from retailers on the other side has become a good business, I guess. I mean, this is how you get 10-year-olds into skincare routines. This is capitalism. Yeah, it's the best type of capitalism. It's the one where you don't have any limitations of how you advertise to people and blurs the line between advertising and content. It's raw. We love it. It's so raw.

Straight to your veins. We're doing rabbit holes, Brian. Yeah, we're going to do rabbit holes. Troy, because you let off the newsletter this week with an ode to the wonder of rabbit holes, which are, yeah, I think you pointed out, they're one of the defining features of the information space. And that's because, you know, as the name of this podcast and the newsletter is, it's algorithmic. I mean, algorithms...

are about rabbit holes. And algorithms are great about leading you down a rabbit hole. It's not like rabbit holes just appeared, but they're much more common now because algorithms are directing the media consumption patterns. I take a little bit of a different point of view because I'm trying to break my Twitter slash X addiction. That is longstanding, I admit it,

And it's really difficult. I hit the two-hour limit that I set for myself. And sometimes I don't like it. Are you using that screen time feature? Yeah, I do the screen time feature. And it's terrible because it leads you down all kinds of paths that I don't want to be down. And it's very difficult. I mean, you might want to think about you should maybe get a dog or a cat or something. Yeah.

Maybe. Spend some time there. Maybe take up another sort of more offline habit like crochet. There's all kinds of golf things you could do. I love rabbit holes though, Brian. And I like the counterpoint that you're beholden to a platform and that you can't control your own urges.

But because I use YouTube a lot, I think Alex is right about this. YouTube is a rabbit-holing kind of platform. And I just noticed that I've had some wondrous media journeys. And obviously, modern media is like

you know, the opposite of a timeline. So we used to have the programming guide and the timeline, and now we rabbit hole. And that's why I think it's interesting and important where I like, Oh my God, this Ron, like I've been rabbit holing on Carson, old Carson interviews. Carson was a talk show host that my mother watched, but he had, you know, this was a legendary time in that format. Reagan was on there between, um,

you know, governorship of California and presidency and the things that he said echo the present in lots of ways. Not only was he kind of what scene at the time is like, who is this outsider actor politician, but was, you know, conservative in this and, and, and railing against the, you know, government overstepping like the present, but, you know, just watching Robin Williams on, on Carson or, or Frank Sinatra. I mean, this is gold, this stuff.

Anyway, it's interesting. Yeah, the YouTube algorithm is not perfect because it assumes that once you're interested in one thing, you want to consume endlessly on that tip. But I got on this Harmony Corrine tip. He's this wackadoodle guy that is a filmmaker and an artist and a writer who famously wrote the script to this movie, Kids, that many of you have probably seen. Oh, God, that movie.

And he's just after that movie came out, he's 19 years old and he's on Letterman and it is a surreal interview. And he is kind of earnest and authentic and seemingly at the time sees the ridiculousness of the kind of celebrity interview format and kind of fucks with it. And I fell down a harmony rabbit hole. There's a bunch of content and even, you know, current interviews with him and then kind of moved into his, uh,

you know, in rewatching kids. And I watched spring breakers, which was like one of the first films from a 24 that he made. And he's made this bizarre movie called gummo. And so that was my rabbit hole. And, and I, I find that I'm consuming media like that very often now. So that's, that's my contribution. I think the impetus for the rabbit hole really matters here, because I think what Brian talks about when going on next is that,

something grabs him by the neck and drags him down a dark alley where he sees all sorts of things that he doesn't want to see. It's a little bit like being invited to a Diddy party.

you know or what you're talking grooming gangs i i didn't know it i i don't need to like be up it is breaking brian i think we need to like have have have an intervention for brian no i'm it is a 100 you are you sound like it yeah because i think look i i really believe that we have i wrote about this in in my newsletter today we have this like crisis really of attention spans

And it's really all because of this algorithmic media system and how chaotic the information space is. And I think when you

I've experienced it. I think it's really difficult to focus for a lot of people. And you read a lot about burnout. Ezra Klein had a really good podcast about burnout. And I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that people feel overwhelmed by a lot of the information that's coming at them. And

You know, the reality is they need less, not more. And I think it's hard being in the information business to say that, but it really is a problem when people can't focus and when your attention becomes commodified because that is how these companies make money.

The reason that the rabbit holes exist is because that is their business model. Yeah. And that is why Facebook has been experimenting, putting on AI generated content into the feed because it's just more stuff that can be more targeted and it's more surface area for ads. More personalized, it's going to be more addictive. It is why some of the most popular...

TikTok content is a screen split in two where they might show a clip of a podcast at the top, but at the bottom, they'll put somebody playing with Play-Doh or car crashes or people falling down a ski slope because...

Because your attention is hijacked by that thing. So the only way to do it is you delete the app. I was talking to my nephew and he's a young guy. He says he's deleted all the apps. He feels better. I don't think you need it for work anymore. I went on 2X this week just to check on something. I was actually checking if there was any news about...

The fire is there. And it descended into this thing that like, yeah, it's become really the algorithm and the people that engage in it have become way too good at playing this game. So it's all about like enragement bait. It's all about hijacking your attention. And we're no longer able to get bored. And these tools are only going to get worse. And so, yeah, Brian, you just need to get off it.

Well, I... Just delete it. Can you do it like a, you know, like there's a no not November, like, you know, no X February. You guys think there's anything good in rabbit holes? Like, here's the thing. My rabbit holing is pulling me away. It is pretty wholesome. Mine is dark. It's pulling me away from mindless Netflix shows. Like, I just don't watch that crap anymore.

And I think that instead what I'm watching is the American experience on the Gilded Age or a review of a new tube amp or an explanation on how transformers actually work. Like I'm a better man for rabbit holes. Rabbit holes were my first kind of like,

you know, because I was very early internet user and I was in forums and stuff like that. And rabbit holes were the first kind of real experience I had of the internet where you could find a topic and then click a link and then click another link and then click another link. And it felt like you were kind of navigating like an, you know, like a detective through the internet and finding out new things. And it felt so satisfying, but even, you know, our beloved YouTube Troy, like I'm sure like now it's like, Oh, you like Carson, right?

Here's all of Carson. Everything Carson. Because it's algorithmic. When I looked into... That's a problem with the algorithm that needs to be cured and tweaked a bit. But as a behavior, rabbit holes are interesting. Yesterday I listened to at least two hours of CoffeeZilla. And then I went into...

mild depression because I said there's so many of these influencers that are just like not getting any repercussions for their actions if you want it that's a rabbit hole so Brian who tell us about kafazilla Brian

Well, he is Steven Findelisen, chemical engineering student. He was a chemical engineering student at Texas A&M. And he's a YouTube creator. He started a different channel called Coffee Break that didn't really take off. And then he saw a lot of the scams, particularly in crypto, and he rebranded himself as CoffeeZilla. He has this sort of film noir thing.

thing going on. Like, he built this studio and he wears the suspenders. Like, he's, like, someone out of, like, a film noir movie. And he basically...

investigates online scams at the end of the day. He did FTX. He did, what is it? Was it Jake Paul or Logan Paul? Probably both of them. Jake Paul's like crypto scam with CryptoZoo. He did Mr. B stuff. And yeah, I think if you- He's like 27 years old, right? And he's like an independent guy. I think he's got like a, I listened to the Joe Rogan one with him and he's got like maybe a couple people like who work with him.

And I think it's fascinating. He doesn't do advertising. Patreon. Patreon. It's also like if you, I don't know, because I don't think our audience are going to be people that are maybe attracted to CoffeeZilla because there's a whole aesthetic. It's kind of, it has pretty good production values and,

But he wears suspenders. He's called Coffeezilla, which makes no sense. His videos are set within kind of a virtual cyberpunk world. There are parts of the video where he goes to a bar and speaks to a robot. Because I think he also likes making computer graphics. So it's very specific. And you might be turned off by some of this stuff. But it is some of the most compelling to watch videos

And infuriating investigative content on the internet. But you went after Mr. Beast too, right? Yeah, yeah. Mr. Beast is one guy I could definitely see like a downfall, like an entire like Netflix series about Mr. Beast. Brian, none of these people are getting, there's no repercussions. Are you, there's no repercussions. The only guy that got repercussions was like. But here's what I think is important about CoffeeZilla is like, I think a lot of times people in the institutional media are like,

well, who's going to do the investigative journalism? He's doing a form of investigative journalism. He might be talking to a robot bartender. I think there's going to be lots of coffee zillas out there. There's Substacks, like the Bear Cave, and they're basically almost like a short seller research thing. They're in specific areas, but I think that there is an opportunity

And you see with CoffeeZilla to have real investigative work being done. But I think a lot of times it gets dismissed. I mean, Troy, you had brought up in the newsletter this Julia Angwin. She used to be a Wall Street Journal reporter. She did a research report recently about what mainstream media can learn from creators.

And, you know, you got to have, you got to be talent and you got to be like entertainers. That was a really good perspective. If just to visit it for a second, because-

We rely on media brands and the processes that they employ to create this kind of understood relationship between reader and brand that there's kind of trust in that transaction. And that the journalist kind of fits into that scheme. And it's assumed that

they bring the trust of the institution to the table. And this report, which was called The Future of Trustworthy Information Learning from Online Content Creators, kind of said like, well, that's actually not true because people don't trust the media like they used to. But their trust levels are high in many cases with creators. What do creators do to create trust? And she sort of broke it down into like,

transparency about their expertise and intentions, putting that right in the content, not assuming that it's there, real interactions with not like, you know, interactions and comments with the audience and incorporating feedback from the audience. And just kind of like it's not pretending to be objective, but trying to be sort of

transparent instead and and and i just thought that was an interesting reflection on how trust is created in this new media mode that that what that's sort of replacing the trust the blind trust we have in institutions well it never really made sense the idea that someone just because someone got hired that makes that you should be you should be trusted because like a

HR approved you. To me, it's the same with credentialism overall. People who constantly remind you where they went to college or, God forbid, the Stuyvesant people. Big deal. What did you do? Who cares? Who cares that you went to Harvard? Why do I know it? Why do you keep telling me it? I think in the same way, we're in a populist time and that kind of unearned

credibility is gone. And so it needs to be rebuilt. And I think it needs to be rebuilt in a lot of these organizations around their individual, quote unquote, talent. I think the Washington Post this week had more layoffs, right? But one of the layoffs, they eviscerated their PR team that was getting their reporters on cable news and whatnot. And now they're going to have an

a talent division, you know? And I think that's like part of, of, of rebuilding these organizations is they're going to have to have, you know, individuals who, who build that kind of trust. Yes. There's going to be a halo of, of the brand itself, but that's just critical to me. I don't know if the brand doesn't become though, like it, it maybe doesn't help or even hurts because a lot of these influencers are

what they build is this parasocial relationship with their audience, right? This one-sided relationship, but the audience feels very connected to them and they feel connected to them because they experienced the content that they're building professionally. They also often have like,

you know, side content of like, Hey, watch me play some video games or here's, here's something personal I'm doing. So they feel really like they have insight into their lives. And then the funding model is either, you know, brands that the creator really gets behind personally or

or things like Patreon, which is the community itself funding it. And all of these things are then constantly scrutinized by the community. There's often the Discord server where people are talking. So it all feels really transparent. And I don't think corporations can ever match that because there's just legal HR concerns, all of these things that once you get into a corporation, you no longer have the capabilities to do that. So it's going to be hard to build the same type of trust with corporations

you know, somebody that works at the New York Times or, you know, then a coffeezilla who's like a really independent spirit, like just from the ground up. And so I don't know how you even copy that model because it's so fundamentally different. I don't know if you copy the model, but I think that you have to like

learn from it and you know like I think like we've talked a lot about what Marquise Brownlee like what is it MKBHD I get the letters sometimes confused

And he's the new Walt Mossberg, right? Like, I mean, Walt Mossberg was the, it was like the most valuable page that the Wall Street Journal of advertising that the Wall Street Journal would sell, supposedly, was the one across from Walt Mossberg's column, right? And he, one day, like, was talking to like an ad salesperson. He's like, what does that go? And he found out how much it went for. And he was like, he did the calculation with how much he was paid. And he was like, oh.

I need a race. Yeah. I mean, and I think that's what also happens, right? One of the kind of best example of the collection of creators was, I don't know if you remember, there was a time where Bon Appetit had this like incredible YouTube channel. It was in the kitchen that had a cast rotation of all these different people that came in.

And that blew up pretty spectacularly. And they all went up and did their own things. You know, most of them are quite successful. The thing is like once you raise somebody to a level where they're successful, why wouldn't they go?

you know, independent. I mean, especially a lot of people who make content are kind of independently minded, you know? Why share the spotlight? Why share the profits? Why? I don't know. I think it's, I think all that stuff's going to be hard. I think maybe the way to look at yourself if you're a media company is more like a talent agency, right? Like you said. Yeah. I mean, the puck model is interesting, right? Like, I mean, they're sort of running out of the, they're becoming more to me like a traditional industry.

you know, media company. I mean, they have publications now with multiple authors. So it's not just individuals. There might be a lead in that, but some of them don't like, but they at least have, you know, put the, put the personalities or the people. And at least in the early ones, they, they had, you know, they had equity in the company. They were partners, I guess they call them. But while we're on this topic, Brian, you went off in the, in the chats this week about Lex Fridman and,

Oh, yes. And I don't know what you got against Lex Friedman. I think that he's kind of fallen out of favor. I don't understand the appeal. I understand the appeal of a Coffeezilla. I understand the appeal of Joe Rogan. I understand the appeal of a lot of

of these characters. Some like, you know, if they're not like a Mr. Beast, like I'm not like a 13 year old. So, I mean, I take that, but like with Lex Friedman, I kind of don't get it. Like, I don't get like, he, he got an interview with, with Zelensky and he talks in this monotone and he wears the black suit. He looks like an undertaker and, you know, his, his tech,

Podcasts are good. He's very technical, I guess. He's at least a computer scientist. When these guys get out of their field into politics and into things like a serious situation like in Ukraine, and he interviewed Zelensky, and there was this ridiculous back and forth about what language they were going to talk in. He wanted to do it in Russian.

And obviously, Zelensky is not going to do the interview in Russian. Zelensky is a native Russian, so he's not going to do it in Russian. I mean, that's just dumb. I mean, they're at war with Russia. Anyway, they did the dubbing and whatnot. And he did the three-hour interview, and...

I watched it and there were so many points where it was just this naivete of him being like, "You just need to love and you need to..." Dude, you're talking to the president of a country at war. I'm sorry, it's not just like, "Yeah, you have to understand Putin loves his country." It's like, no, that's just not going to

You know, I think Zelensky came off pretty good during it. I don't think Lex Friedman did. And, you know, he's talking about Joe Rogan's comedy club. Are we kidding me? I'm like, I'm not sure if we need to go back to, like, just having, like, traditional media do these interviews. But, like, seriously? Like, he's like, you've got to come to Austin and go to, like, Joe Rogan's comedy club.

Not a great moment. You said that? Yes. He was, he's like, I want to bring peace. Did you actually watch it? And Zelensky was like, well, I've got a busy schedule. He's a sycophant. And he started doing that with all, he kind of, I think, allows his guests to feel like, you

you know, philosopher monks like he is talking about like, but isn't it all about love and brotherhood? And I know. Yeah. Yeah. And then they try to like, you know, be very thoughtful and philosophical. He's a dork. And he, he's, he's, he overplays his hand every time. He's not even like technically that interesting to listen to. He's somebody that keeps reminding of humble, curious,

and loving he is, which is always a fucking red flag. Yeah. He just like, you know, you get a guest and then that brings another guest and everybody loves really like, wow, that's good. This is going to be the safest place for me to, to spout all this stuff out. And the more rich and powerful these people are, the more they love hearing the sound of their own voice. I mean, look at us. And he gives this really cozy, comfortable, little warm duvet of like, you

you know, fucking nonsense, like just like fuzzy philosophy around stuff. And then maybe, maybe Trump is all about love and maybe, maybe we all are about love and he's just a bullshit artist. Yeah. I mean, the quicker that type of stuff like goes away, the better, but I'm, I'm afraid it won't, you know, and you can see Zelensky's fucking frustration.

In his eyes. Like, you know, having to remind him, hey, you know, when somebody carpet bombs your family, it's really hard to love that person when you're not getting any. And so, I don't know. I find all these, he's kind of like an example of mediocre tech people that have outsized success in

and let that go to their head and start feeling like there's some sort of techno guru. But this is a particular execution issue to me. I think there's a space for alternative media to have these kinds of conversations with all kinds of people, including world leaders. I think they have a different dynamic. I don't think it has to be just someone from 60 Minutes having an edited interview.

Like, I mean, you don't have to convince me of that. Like I wish everything was just on YouTube. I wish coffee Zilla did that interview. All right. Should we get to the good product? Okay.

Do we have a good product? I have a good product if you don't have one. We got some good products. I got some good products this week. It's CES. So there's that masturbation device you saw on CES. I already covered that. Yeah? I stayed quiet. Middle-aged men talking about that stuff is just not... No market. Well, Troy brought it up. I was going to start an ode to the breakfast meeting, but I won't go there. I think breakfast meetings are the best. They're the best meeting of the day, but...

I used to do these great breakfast meetings at the private dining room at Hearst Tower. They were always so good. The other one, I want to get into my good product, but just on the way there, I've been consuming these just now and then instead of alcohol, this company called Can, C-A-N-N, which are like a cranberry sage THC refresher.

But it's only a couple of milligrams, so you can bang back a couple and just kind of takes the edge off a little bit. It's a nice product. Can. Cranberry sage THC refresher. It's a nice product. But, you know, there's a company. I don't know if this is a good product or not. Maybe I'll get feedback or you guys will because I don't think that one should have too many appliances on their countertop.

I think that it's messy and noisy. But this company, Ninja, has taken over TikTok such that people of my youngest daughter's age get influenced by their blenders and things. And she brought home this upside. It's basically an upside down blender positioned as an ice cream maker.

And what you do is every night you freeze whatever you want to freeze, whether it's a frozen margarita or bananas and almond milk and vanilla and a little bit of sweetener. And you freeze it and then you put it in the machine and the machine drops down this whirling blade into your frozen thing and it turns it into ice cream.

And it's a countertop device and think, you know, a blender turned upside down that does this. What is it called, Troy? It's called the Ninja Ice Cream Maker.

Is that what it's called? I think so. And what's interesting about it is what comes out of it is really good. Yummy. Yummy. So that's a good product. It's a good product. They have another popular thing out there. They've got a crisper. They've got a new air fryer. It's glass. And apparently, it's, I don't know, it makes things crispy. Yeah.

No, Ninja. I thought it was you were going to say it makes like you a new kidney or something. No, no, just crispy. I mean, that's why they call it the Ninja Ice Cream Maker makes ice cream and the Ninja Crisper makes things while crispy. Yeah. I mean, if you got room on the counter and you want to make ice cream every morning, it's kind of a nice it's a nice thing. Ice cream in the morning is weird, but it's also called the Ninja Creamy and it is all over TikTok.

It was probably product of the moment in September 2024. So thank you for bringing this to our attention, Troy. Yeah. Once again, I've smashed it with good product. Yeah. So if you want to make Troy happy, just bring him some ice cream at the morning meeting. Yeah.

make him feel important where where do you like to have your morning meetings do you what are your go-to spots oh every time crosby street hotel that's where i go oh okay yeah i saw you know your boy scott was there today scott galloway scott galloway yeah was he is he tall i think he's tall right he was sitting down but he is tall yes i saw carl lagerfeld there once

Oh, really? I had a nice breakfast with the ex-CEO of Politico who stumbled upon our podcast and became a fan of it. He likes you guys. Yeah. Wow. Even the nice things to say about you, Alex. I feel like I was, well, that's surprising, but I appreciate it. Thank you. Well, why don't you bring a little, I know you got any positivity before you bounce? Anything positive to add to this podcast? What

What's bringing you joy right now, Alex? I think there are many good, thoughtful creators and commenters on YouTube. And sometimes when I feel like the world is crazy and I turn on the news and nobody's talking about it, it's nice to get online and hear people say that, even though it's essentially things that I know. So folks like CoffeeZilla, you know, highlighting things or...

Things like that. I find that engaging. I have a good, I have, I have one already lined up for next week with information space creator.

Do you have your good, what's your good product is so to curiosity? My good product is an IV. An IV? Yeah. An IV is amazing. I got a norovirus this week and I had to go to the hospital. I don't know. I don't know. I do not. I'm not sickly. I got the PVA virus and then I got this norovirus. I don't know what exactly is going on. It's very, very unpleasant. What happens when you get it? You don't want to know.

Nora's everywhere. And also, you know, IVs, at least in some California circles, you know, it's a great cure for hangovers. People have IVs like set up. In Miami. There's a place right like two blocks away. That's right. You live in New York. That's true. The Ninja IV. Yeah.

It shoots ice cream straight into your bloodstream. And you can have it cannabis-infused as well. I used to run a lot of long-distance races, and I got super dehydrated a few times and had to go into the medical tent.

I would get an IV. I've gone from not knowing where I was to feeling completely fine after an IV. IVs are amazing. It did the trick with this. I didn't feel amazing afterwards, but it got me on the road to recovery. Yeah.

Never turn down an IV. That's basically my advice. Wherever you are, you could be anywhere. Honestly, in triathlons, they make people, after they finish particularly Ironman races, they weigh you beforehand and weigh you when you go into the medical tent because a lot of times people fake

needing an IV because they know that it will speed their recovery so much and they'll feel so much better. So they don't really need it like technically medically, but it's like such a bonus.

There you go, folks. All right. You've heard it here. That's it for this episode of People vs. Algorithms, where each week we uncover patterns shaping media, culture, and technology. Big thanks, as always, to our producer, Vanya Arsinov. She always makes us a little clearer and more understandable, and we appreciate her very, very much.

If you're enjoying these conversations, we'd love for you to leave us a review. It helps us get the word out and keeps our community growing. Remember, you can find People vs. Algorithms on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and now on YouTube. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again next week. Thanks, everybody. See you. Bye. Bye.