The Streisand Effect with Mike Masnick
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Causing media.

hello one, welcome to Better off line. I am, of course, your host. That one I remain punished and hated forever.

Today, enjoyed by mike magnic. He's the CEO and founder of text, the inventor of the striking effect, and now a board member of the social network, blue sky. Mike, thank you so much for joining me.

Yeah, happy to be here.

So let's start with the strikes and effect. Why don't you tell the story of how you coin that, that just walk us through that one? Because now that i've heard about that, I was all I can think .

about yeah I mean, there are there's two elements to the file story, one of which is what caused the term to to be that and then me eventually naming IT the first was just the you know I was amazed by the story of Barbara and suing this guy um I always forget his name can something um who was doing this project? He was he'd been a fairly successful tech guy, but he was very interested in conservation.

And so uh, he was like renting helicopter every few months and flying along the west coast of the united states and taking a photograph every uh you know every bit of the way. And this idea was to continue to do that every few years, and track a track the erosion of the west coast of the united states. Okay, yeah, kind of an interesting projects.

You know, this is pre google maps per satellite, easy access to satellite image, all this kind of stuff. And he created this website and it's still on mine. And IT is incredibly old fashioned um where you could go picture to picture you you know no map like modern mappings of where we could slide along.

He go picture a picture along the way. And that had this ability for people to their own annotations. And somebody found barber style zan's house in malawi u and commented on IT that this is barber store. The strident the state, I believe, was the phrase that was ripped on IT.

And somebody, a strike and lawyer found IT and uh threatened him and then sued him um for for this and the the story that caught my attention at least was that what came out in the court documents was before the lawsuit um that image had been viewed I believe IT was eight times two of which were from my p addresses associated with the law firm that was representing barber style so at most six people had seen the photo prior to to this lawsuit and in the immediate aftermath um hundreds of thousands of people saw the the photo um and he he eventually won lawsuit in fact a striking how to pay for his his legal fees and I had written about at the time I just thought this crazy story. But I kept seeing other examples of that kind of thing where people would you know trying get something taken down offline and the end result would be way more attention paid to IT. And so there was a story that that actually happened. I think IT was almost two years after the original strides and lawsuit. Everything in which um there was the site which also might still be online and also might be very outdated, called the urinal that net where again .

my posts yes yes this .

the early internet where anyone would play anything mine yeah and they would post photos of urinals and they were very specific and very clear um that urinals only no people, no body parts, just urinals from around the world and they had pages of different ones and there were some hotel or something or I can't remember somebody got very mad that a urinal from their property was shown and and sent a legal threat letter and so I wrote about that and and in doing so said, you know, there should be A A term for this situation where someone, where something is not getting attention and and someone sends to take down and sudenly that draws all this attention into the thing that they wanted gone and then I just jokingly said, what do we call the straight and effect and linked back to my story about the the stride and photo and then somehow I have no idea how that called on. I didn't do much. I mean I may have mentioned IT again a few times but um people picked up on IT and I took on a life of its own and most of which I had nothing to do with.

And I think it's I think it's ironic that despite the terms fame, IT has not brought more attention to the actual providence of the term but now IT has now we have the Better off line. Not even remotely exclusive. If you probably tell the star parties for years.

I may have told that a few times.

Yes, it's a great story though. Looking about old websites, take them come up on thirty years of running this site yeah .

what has changed because the .

design has and I know I say that negatively, I actually love the fact that IT loads properly. There's not like some insane ee frame situation. Yeah, my phone is in seven hundred degrees because i'm looking at IT.

Well yes, well, the site test change a few times, but that has not changed in a long time. So this this is probably the third generation of tectonic, but I think IT IT hasn't really changed much, probably two thousand and six, two thousand and seven. By the last time we did a major overhaul of the look and fear of the site. Um yeah I mean, look, I wanted to write about the technology industry and what was going on and I was very interested in IT and I started when I was in business school and um just I originally started writing I I was old school is writing an email newsletters before email .

newsletters .

were crazy idea, the rage and then I thought like, you know newsletters who reads newsletters? I gotta turn this .

in to a website um and so I just .

a IT was entirely email, no website oh baby, when I started in one thousand ninety seven, IT was entirely an email thing and and then I turned into a website about six months after the email and original IT was just hosting the copies of the email news letter and then I started to build IT out and then what um what caught my attention in early around sometime in one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight I first saw slashdot and this is before the word blog existed and I was like, oh this this format and this set up is really cool um I wonder if I could do that and turn the website into that and so I I um got I used slash code a zero point three. This was before they had released an official slash code but they still offered .

a would you mean a slash code for don't know, like me.

slash code was their software that they used to that was slashdot. Um I was they they decided to release you. They, uh, god, what's his name? Rob multa was the guy who created slashdot, and he released the code he had written written one of the first sort of blocking type software products um and IT was very messy and IT took me and less me but more a friend of mine who was willing to get in and deal with the the massive code, which was not easy, took us two or three months to figure how i'd actually get IT to set up and then suddenly, like I could blog and suddenly I could write easily every day rather than what I was doing originally, which was like and coding H T. M.

Files and fp them before you could been up blogs on the none of .

that stuff that again, the word blog didn't even exit.

When did .

you think so? I'm not going to say actually D I D found a hosting company um and I still do some work with that hosting company um and we used to we used to advertise, I mean that is IT can be found that people are looking. But because we we uh occasionally and we are no longer texters no longer hosted with them um but we still host some other stuff with them because they've been amazing partners and I just found them completely randomly through probably searching yahoo and found a random little tiny hosting company um but because we sometimes receive very angry legal threats um and sometimes those legal threats trying go upstream are partner hosting company was receiving too many legal threats and said, hey, could you not mention without you? Host.

could you could you know this and that now that yes.

I think it's not but I know and there, like a great, great guy, is very small company, a tiny, tiny company.

And that you should work with you like for for the small ly ones I used to work with a very small domain hosting company, then got bought by a big one, and then I became shit most immediately. I'm not named them as their .

and so yeah, but this was not there were great. In fact, like as I said, like we still use them for certain projects um and and I trust those guys to be absolutely amazing. But but yes, so we just found a small hosting company and they were the original host of text for a very long time and so um but yeah and eventually the word blog came about afterwards and I resisted calling text or to blog for a really long time and then eventually can realize like you know, IT is so did .

you finish business school?

I did finish business school. I have an MBA and I so I because I started when I was in business school, I got my M B A. I moved out to california and I started working for um when I turned that intel did my big tech at the time company experience for a little bit. I went to an e commerce start up that was very big for about a week and a half and I joined um like a week after that and so I got to ride the the e commerce start up down a very big slope uh downward constantly downward um for about a year um during the this was pre the burst of the dot com bubble.

So what yeah is I was there .

from ninety eight to ninety nine oh right .

the good year yeah I except for us right?

So I mean, part of the issue was we saw one of our competitors go public based on, I don't know, nonsense and a power .

before and right .

yeah yeah this is yeah no and and so you know, we decided that we had to go public to and and we had bankers, like we had bankers and consultants and all this nonsense and and they looked about, we had and they said, you know, you can go public like, that's how bad our situation was. Everybody was going public with zero revenue and we couldn't. That is, and we had problems, I might .

say that. So after that, did you go pro with text or did you .

so basically, there a couple reasons why I don't need to go into all the the history there but I I eventually know did a did a my quitting and um and I I sort of cast around and I sort of was thinking of doing another start up myself. And then like albans, we were like, but the whole time, even when I was at this company, know I was working on tectonic the side and I was just sort of like, especially as everything was going terrible, that company was kind of my release where I can write about all the shit that's going down.

quite literally. What I did in the the start of my newsletter was because I was depressed due to professional, yeah, personal things. I was like, I need to do something. Yes.

yes. Yeah, totally. And so like, that's what I was doing and then um and then I was like casking about different idea. I was working with some friends and I was like, mean, we should do to start up and we're talking about different ideas and then a couple people like, dude, you seem to really like doing this writing yeah and like doctor is you know seems good and like maybe you could turn that into a company um and so you know so yeah so a few months later sort said, okay, i'm going to going to commit to this .

full time and was IT just you .

for a while or how long yeah well I mean the history is like, um there there were someone else there in the very early years who sort of was helping me out and we are trying to get IT he was not full time and we're trying to get them to the point that I was full time and that did that never worked out and then but soon after that um brought on basically basically a small group of people who were um you know we referred to his co founders now .

um and answer .

t to help me out helping helping me sort of build IT out how many people .

to go now um we are very small um we .

are now four four people cool and one of those is called boat as well yeah goat yeah a boat .

his lesson sorry.

he is your stupid. Um yeah so ccs been writing for us for for a long time. Um he I had him I had him right for us at one point. I think he didn't me a favor. I mean um where I I either I was can remember for you either I got married or I had purna leave and I needed someone to help write and and he came in for a couple weeks and then yeah later on when we were able to bringing them on.

So how are you feeling about the tech media? Because I say this with the reason that brought you want is to also publicly say you're fucking awesome. And i've been reading IT for my entire career and IT feels like one of the only outlets that has not changed toneli. You've kept you've been consistently I think you are one of the other people who gets called like a sbic like I do I always get pissed off with .

which I just doesn't help yeah yeah um yeah I got I don't know I mean, it's kind of wear like I actually don't care too much what people think about me or so so like none of that is ever concerned me that much um but yeah you know I don't know costin I think is is a term m that's been used for yeah but IT doesn't feel like you're fighting .

IT feels like you just are pissed off that people aren't more consistent and honest. Stand up from with stuff .

yeah yeah it's just like, you know I I have opinions and this is chance to express so not gona hold back and it's like I don't know I feel like a lot of people you know I mean, obviously like if you're working for like a big media company there, the limits put on kind of what you can say, but also IT feels like a lot of people who sort to get into writing also.

You know they kind of do IT to then like move into a role like they want to get hired by I don't CNN nbc or something like that. And that was like never my goal. So like, I never had this concern that like, oh, you know, like, well, if I write this, no base are going to hire me because i'm not trying to get hired that so so that was never know never concern of mine but IT feels totally like .

you at least had a mission though i've .

always been .

trying to get hired of what that is in the best .

way yeah yeah and um you know I I don't know I mean, I have at some point I I need to dig up and fine like and I know it's like some tis to carl and other people. We brought on new writers. I had sort of like a editorial like here's our mission, right? Here's what we're trying to do but it's it's like twenty years old at this point.

I haven't looked at I don't even know where I would find IT. But like you know, my take on IT was always like the key thing for me detector is I actually and this is where like, but I say, I don't know if I disagree with you or you might disagree me where's like, I am weirdly optimistic about technology. I actually do think technology is like a journal, good driving force.

And like, I actually fully agree, by the way, okay? And my innovation has all this amazing opportunity um that I would love to see realized. Um thanks. So like my focus, unlike anything that gets in the way of IT and and so like and I want to be really careful here because like there's like the mark Anderson view, like who says something that sounds kind of like what i'm saying here, right? But is not an optimist.

He mentions nick land, yeah, that's not the dark enlightenment guys are not optimists.

right? And so his whole thing is like this acceleration is approached to like technology and innovation. And and my take on IT is more like, I want to see all of these, like all of the good stuff that technology enables to become reality. I would like to see IT sooner because I only have so long to live.

And the more of IT that I can see, and the more of IT that will be available to my kids and, you know, everybody else, I think, would be good, but that, you know, there are ways to do that, right? And there are ways to do IT Better. And to take a long term view of how how do we actually make the world Better with these kinds of innovations.

And so I think you know poorly executed innovation is bad and and leads to problems. And so where I get upset is sort of and you know what sets me off on various rans is like, you know, efforts that get in the way of good innovation, right? So it's not like like the Andrew and viewpoint is like anything that gets in the way of any innovation is is a problem. And you know and also.

I don't the things I fully agree with you, I regularly get told a metheny pessimist, I don't like this stuff. I love the computer. yeah. Is the only reason i'm a person like, I like the drill crye tweet, but about the internet, like my job, my friend, loved ones, lovers crying and internet.

And it's now get the fucked out of my office, which is the quote from the truth for not saying this to make but it's like I agree with you, it's these things may seem like we're deeply interrogating them and attacking them, but it's like these things are in the way of cool stuff happening. Yes, centralization, monopolization city regulations that stop patrol, innovative happens are the things that will stop cool stuff happening. yes. And I think too regularly people kind of conflate that with hating, but it's like you should hate the stuff that gets in the way of the .

cool stuff exactly. Yeah, yeah. That that is very much my view of these things. I mean, I would love to see more cool stuff. So stuff that gets in the way of that I find problematic.

Imagine being a student right now. You're twenty twenty four the year without access to wifi. It's a disadventure ge. Millions of households actually still don't have wifi.

So obvious reading about what eighteen t is doing and it's pretty incredible what they're doing is equipped twenty thousand students, so twenty thousand kids essentially in need with backpacks loaded with laptops and school supplies to get that connection. You've got this generation of kids that we're gonna be the the teachers, doctors and health care workers. Ed gar mas mella is his name of friends of the children in seattle to charity that eighteen and t teamed up with.

He has a point. He says every backpack and laptop provided by our generous partners isn't just a gift. It's a he says these tools lay the foundation for our youth, ensuring they have the same opportunities to learn, grow and succeed as anyone else. So it's very .

important connecting changes everything att. So many, many complainers and haters, they hate me so much. They tell me I never like anything, but I want to talk about blue sky OK you join the board of yeah so how did that .

actually come abound yeah so I mean, you know I don't know how much you know about the history of blue sky itself.

I think you .

would be good to tell listening. sure. So I and I have some association with IT um though it's sort of semi random um which was that you know when this goes back to like I think was like I had looked this up fairly recently so I don't hold me to the dates but I think is around like twenty fourteen or so was when there was suddenly some controversies around the way that twitter and redit were handling certain content moderation controversies um and there is you basically like really bad city content on both of those platforms.

And there was a big debate over whether not those company he should step in and take down that content and whether not that was an attack on free speech, ed, or we've heard all the debates, but that was really the first one that really boiled through was was around twenty fourteen. And I among the other things that I believe in strongly is like free speech is a very important concept to me. And again, like I always feel like now I need to cavy out that because lots of most people who say they support free speech, don't they .

support saying the n word yeah like that is the big .

goal yeah yeah it's it's very frustrating to me. I I support actual free speech .

yes um .

and and that includes you know the right of private platforms to say we don't want to associate with you, right that is a right of association which is considered a one part of the right of free speech. But at the same time, I do appreciate again like the power of the internet itself um to be this platform of enabling more good speech, some bad speech, obviously, but also an awful lot of really, really good speech and I am very, very concerned about an overreaction where in an attempt to stop the bad speech, which again is very much there, that we throw out a opening of really good and important .

speech you give an example because this is a thorny .

topic I think is yeah sure I mean obviously like um you know me too. Black life's matter you know these kinds of things came about because of the internet uh the arab spring is another one where the internet was incredibly powerful in in having these voices be able to speak out and to um you know form groups and organized and and talk to each other um that really was not particularly possible prior to the internet being there and enabling that kindness speech and I worry when we talk about you stopping certain kinds of of speech that that would enable people to stop these these other kinds of of good speech um and so that that was sort of like larger issue sort of thinking about like how do we protect you know the ability for people to speak out, to speak truth, to power in certain cases where IT is really important um also protect the right of private you know um services to say I don't want to associate with this content, not be forced to host, no not see content, for example, or hateful content.

How do we sort of baLance those things? And because i'm old and because i'm from you know, I existed on the internet in the nineties and I was like I felt like the internet was kind of different back then, right? So I just started thinking through these things and I said, well, you know, wait, how do we get to this world in which, you know, I grew up free worldwide web um use net and irc and all of these.

I was a polar man, if you remember polis.

I say I was .

a great side, had colors and shit. okay?

I don't remember what I R C client I used get IT, but know I used golfer before the web existed. Like, I don't know. Remember golf?

I don't know gofer.

I'm looking at up now, okay IT like a text based um you menu systems like I protocol .

is yes yes so .

I I would get the weather every morning by go vern to a surfer and finding out what the weather was um so you know so I like we had all these things that then they were all protocol based and then anyone could build, right? So you use a different irc client. Then I did.

Anyone could build on IT because IT was all a protocol and anyone could build. And I was like, weight, you know, the world changed summer in the last twenty years, and now we have all these services that are wholly owned corporations, and they obviously have their own interests, and that doesn't seem like a great world. So I wrote a blog post that just kind of suggested like, hey, you know, why aren't these things built on protocols? Why are they all wholly owned corporations? Because that's where IT seems like all how much of the problems come in and .

then these own interOperable portals in yeah right.

I means like because like you know once you know I was kind of think I was thinking back to use net honestly where it's like, yeah you know you had bad, terrible people on the depending where you are risky. But you also had like q files and you had different internet servers that would ban different groups.

different I mean, some of the early gaming groups I was in yeah like just .

playing you o yeah I mean, there all all sorts of stuff and but like you had methods of dealing with IT but I was like community based IT wasn't like IT wasn't like, you know, the president of use net has to decide which which things are allowed in, which are not. But like as a community, we can sort of figure out or through individuals like with kill files and stuff.

Like you could say like I don't look, I never wanted hear from IT again, right? So like, I make sure make sure that i'd never have to deal with him. And so you know and I like that, that was like a Better world.

Where is now like everything? Because like redit is fully in control of redit and twitter is fully in control of twitter. We're in this world where we are totally dependent on the decisions that they make. And you know like, yes, there is like one decider.

And so like in some cases, maybe that is useful, but you know on the whole, that feels like a less great world because the incentives that they have are also you know not always aligned with the the users and certainly not aligned with like you know what what might be best for for different is always going to be a single view. And usually it's like what is going to be the the biggest profit you know for for us. And so so I wrote this piece out of like theorizing. Like what would that look like if we had a more interpret able, protocol based world for these kinds of services? And then I written a few more things about IT. And at some point in my twenty eighteen um the night institute columbia asked if I would write a paper kind of outlining that idea and that made me really sit down and sort of think through IT more systematically and I wrote this paper called protocols, not platforms um which um I was you went back and forth with them on editing there were two two folks at um at the night institute who were really really good like amazing editors like really chAllenged everything I wrote and numbers just like but how would this work like why would that and really made me you work hard getting that paper right and we publish they publish that in twenty nineteen and they got a little bit of attention early on and then IT sort of died out and then um jack dorsey found the paper um and I kind of think I know how he didn't not entirely sure and and he he reached out and he was just like hey uh a regia paper um and I think we want to do that with twitter and and so to take one step back like my thought and writing that paper to create that world so I was sort of arguing that this world is a Better world where these of every major platform would have a .

protocol that could be connected to the other or yeah I mean.

There are few different ways that I could be done but basically is like what can we do to like take away the power of like a mark zacchary g um or you a sergey brin or whatever to like control a huge portion of the internet um was kind of underlying thinking but still have the benefits of the services right like like there are good things. But you know the problem comes in when you one year sort of stuck there, right?

If you you know like the example and I use this in the paper and IT comes up a lot is like the email example where you know um compared to like facebook right if I leave facebook and I mostly have but you know when I leave facebook, that means my family that uses facebook, my cousins, my air and uncles that all stay in touch through facebook. I no longer know what's going on with them because I don't I don't want to deal with basic beginning more. But email like if I don't like my email provider, I can find a new em Operator and I don't lose touch with everyone that I email because I can just import my address spoke over because I said, you know why? Why can't we make all of the internet services that we like, more like the email example and less like the facebook example? If I leave, I can still stay in touch .

with people. Who is the incentive for the platforms to do this?

So yes, so if you read the protocols of platforms paper, you see like I I tried to come up with a bunch of incentives to effectively convince the companies to recognize that there are potential antibes. Yes, obviously they are losing control. But my main pitch to them, and this is the one that jack seemed to buy, was um you also don't get blame for everything anymore. And so whether not that is a good thing or not, just like because I and .

the little unclear, the downside is for them that they can no longer trap you there, but in return, you're not totally at fault a well.

basically, you know it's like when you know so this is not again, not a perfect analogy, but it's like think of email, email and spam, right? So everyone sort of like trying to deal with spam, but at no point of they like calling the CEO of email to testify before congress because they're spam everywhere.

I sort of recognized that this is a collective action issue, and it's a collective problem that everyone has to try to work on in different ways. And you had. Early on at least, you had different people sort of creating different spam fighting tools. And the discussion was over that, like how how do we Better handle those things rather than, you know, you, mr. C E O of email, have to fix this.

I think we are on a little confused. Yeah but forgive me for this, is that how does this deal with, like troll and special, that if they have less responsibility even who does? So if there was a yes, is this is this, I guess, federated? Is this what you're suggesting like the .

or is this forget? No, no, no, it's a little bit complex step to rap ahead around complex for me, my head around IT. And so that's fine. It's important. It's good to ask questions. no. So my thinking was that what happens is if this I didn't think of that as federated isn't like master on right, I mean, we can get into like specific debates about the actual like technical infrastructure and how it's bill that I don't think that says important.

The idea more was that if IT is not holy, controlled by one company, those companies can still, you have a responsibility in terms of keeping their part of IT clean in order to keep users. Because now the way I looked at IT was, you know, if so, imagine a world in which there are lots of twitters. And this is kind of the way I was thinking about that, that could all interOperate and communicate across each other.

If jack dorsey, you at that time still running twitter, does something really stupid or enables too many notes to be too nazi ful, then people will leave, right? right? Because there is no easy exit under this kind of system, and therefore, he has incentives to actually keep things clean. Now this is a part of that some people get upset about. Or just like if IT is a protocol, then you could still have you know not to to, to, which is kind of what we have.

Now you can just say twitter now .

yeah or x right so uh and um you know but in that world I I think they can be much more isolated. Now this is partly theoretical in my belief, but also you would be .

building a site on top of a protocol IT would use the protocol 鱼， you would be visiting a site.

right? So you you would still be using a site um and then but but you would have one, you would have more control yourself because you could bring in your own algorithms or other people's algorithms or so other and use that to .

call north the nazis rather than about .

them to call north the noses. But again, like there are different layers here in terms of the stack, in terms of who's doing which part of IT. But you could still have room for a company like a twitter or now a blue sky um that has some moderation features. And if people really dislike the way that they're moderating, they could build their own from .

the same procol with the same users with the same accounts exactly. And that's what blue sky is really do IT like. Blue guy is on top of A L or is IT a protocol self?

no. So blue guy is on on top of a protocol, the protocol, A T protocol. Um and so, you know, what happened was that jack decided that twitter would do this somewhat convinced by my paper and decided that he would he would um hire small team of engineers, give them some money and have them go and build the protocol with the idea being that twitter would adopt that protocol um eventually and so that was the plan that he sort of set in motion in late twenty nineteen. Um and he know he announced on twitter and he gave a shadow to my paper, but I had no official anything I had spoken to him um after he read the paper had a couple conversations with them and I gotten alert the night before he sent off that thread saying he was gona do IT he was gonna nounce um but I had no no role or any any association with IT and then um then well covet happened which I think probably through our timeless ines but um twitter folks got a bunch people who are interested in the central social media together in an online sort of chat space using um which is another death rally zed verticle and you know they basically talked about ideas for really long time and I took twitter really very way too long, basically another year and a half until they finally decided they were going to hire somebody to lead the blue sky project and then that took a while and they eventually hire j graber but again, j very smartly said this needs to be separated. Can be a part of twitter and needs to be independent from twitter .

because otherwise someone could buy IT and and then we destroy IT yeah we wouldn't want that to happen .

yeah so so pretty pressure on her part.

Imagine being a student right now, you're twenty twenty four the year without access to wifi, it's a disadvantage. Millions of households actually still don't have wifi reading about what A T N T is doing. And it's pretty incredible.

What they are doing is equipped twenty thousand students, so twenty thousand kids essentially in need with backpacks loaded with laptops and school supplies to get that connection. You've got this generation of kids that are gonna the the teachers, doctors, you know, health care workers. Ed gmh mella is his name of friends of the children in seattle to charity that eighteen t teamed up with. He has a quality and he says every backpack and laptop provided by our generous partners isn't just a gift, it's a lifeline. He says these tools lay the foundation for our youth, ensuring they have the same opportunities to learn, grow and succeed as anyone else is very important.

Connecting changes everything. A, T, N, T. And so how did you end up on the board then? yes.

So I was also in the thread and like a hundred people mention me. So I mean, I have no qualifications. I post A A, I don't really know stuff. So I mean, it's unfair you got IT was .

still um yeah so I mean basic I mean I had known jay um i'd known jane from before all of this actually I had met with her kind of around when the the protocols platforms and is jay .

grade a grade the CEO .

I met with her kind of when the paper came out um through a mutual friend SHE had read the paper and liked IT and we had lunch and um just very quickly like I realized like SHE SHE internalized SHE understood IT Better than I did and he understood my paper Better than I did and i've wrote IT and that was like as like wall this is that rocks .

as far as a CEO C E O of a website actually knowing how IT works I am not even being sarcastic here no everything is IT was really .

I opening and this is obviously before you know blue skye exist and then so SHE you you once twitter and now is blue sky SHE SHE had made IT clear to them that he really wanted run IT and jack and look and twitter like really took a lot of time to actually realize that like SHE should run IT and like they interviewed lot of other people they they actually again, I had no official association. I never got paid and never you know had no contractor anything, but they actually had me interview people who might run the blue sky project at one point .

that's really cool.

Yeah was I was just that I just asked me and I said, is sure. And then I gave me feedback and I recommended that they hire j though there were really good other people and I .

said there was a board of people setting up blue sky. People know the organization. So there was a board of people .

that yeah was mostly twitter people. There are few outsiders, but IT was mostly like senior executives at twitter, and they were .

still at twitter at the time. And then they .

left no excerpt people they interviewed yet none of the people they interviewed were twitter sorry, all the people that they interviewed i'm so the people who were doing like the interviewing were to .

people on a couple .

outside people like me know and a few others that's really cool though yeah and then um and then and and were IT was actually some really impressive candidates and like I was like as kind of blown away about like how many smart people were thinking through how you actually build a decentralize social media protocol um and then eventually they hire jay and SHE start and SHE set IT up as an independent Operation um and then built out the company and the um originally had so the board was herself um Jerry Miller who um is on the board and was um has a lot of experience in decentralized protocols and standards and then jack was the third board member and in the middle of all of this as well then elon came along obviously um I think your .

listeners know what .

happened of .

zip two founder.

Yes, it's funny if you go way back in the texture to archives, I have a post about zip two, where I, I called him elton musk e at the time. Which I i've never corrected um and so so yeah jacket is on board but somewhere around this time when elon look over um jack discovered noster which is this other decentralized social media protocol and he became really, really interested in IT.

Um and this is actually about the last time I spoke with jack where he was like, oh, you should check out noster like IT is everything that your paper um you know that your paper described and as like, okay, that's interesting and I like, but what about blue sky? Like, aren't you now you own the body, you're on the board and he's like, yeah he like there they're too slow. No star is going to move .

much faster and yeah he's no 点 doing yeah yeah so .

like I checked that out and actually do think there are some really cool things about noster， i'm sure. And like technically, it's it's a really interesting set up um that he's right that IT doesn't able like a lot of like really some really cool things can be done via noster.

And that is interesting because both the the technical logical underpinnings of both noster and the the at protocol, which is what blue sky is based on, both really come out of this other decentralized protocol called secure skettle loot, which not gonna get into, and what that is what happened to IT. But so both them take some of the technological thinkings from the same, same core idea, and that's actually kind of interesting. And you know, if you get into the technical weeds is kind of need how there are some similarities there.

But he got really focused on IT, mainly because I was like, so light weight and so simple that people could build on IT very quickly, whereas lue sky was taking more time. But part of the reason why blues, I was taking more time, and part of the reason why i've always been really impressed by j, is that her approach to all of this is like people, like some people care about the centralization. Most people don't.

And if you're going to build a thing that works, like the fact that this is a decentralized protocol underneath, shouldn't IT shouldn't matter to most users. You they need to build a just a good service up front, like that's the most important thing. And so you know, jays very, very concise ious of that and thoughts of that.

So anyway, so that all happened a jackey style on the board. And then at some point, he was doing an interview and was sort of confronted about something, and he was, I go, i'm quitting the board and and so he quit the board and suddenly there was an an empty seat on the blue sky. And and then, yes, lots of names were thrown out in big threads on blue sky of potential replacement.

every .

fan but I mean, I I had been in sort of regular contact with j um ever since blue sky started and there were different points where different things popped up and SHE had reached out to me for thoughts and advice and I had a few phone calls with her over the time. And so basically, like, I think we SHE had reached out because he wanted some advice on something. And again, this is all totally informal.

I had no official relationship or anything. And we started talking and and I toss out the idea is like, I know jack left um if you want me to help find you someone else, I am willing to like evaluate other people um but also like if you're interested in potentially having me be that person, i'm also interested in that. And so that's basically what I said and we continue that conversation over the course of about two months. Um and I spoke to jeremy, who's the other board member and some other folks as well and then eventually you they offered me that's bot cool. That's the best story.

To wrap this up, I will ask you the question I love to ask people, which is why should we have hope right now? Because there's so much there's so much to press on. I am not talking about politics and just talking about within the tech industry. There's so much share that so much grim share. What gives you hope right now?

Yeah I mean, honestly, I mean stuff like like blue sky and I will broaden that to say like all of the attempts at building new desensitize systems, um I find super exciting and encouraging because it's it's showing that we can build that world where it's like we can look at you know the the the success of social media as a concept is really interesting and it's cool like IT is allowed so many people to connect.

And yes, there are all sorts of downsides like again, not denying what we know are the downside of social media, but like the the number of important friendships and you know, business contacts and and relationships that I ve built through social media. This concept of people being able to communicate with each other so easily is is such a powerful thing that I think a lot of people take for granted. And yes, what happened was that that all sort of got locked in these initial ed silos from these you know giant companies run by often terrible people um and you with with very misguided incentives. The thing that I am really enthusiastic about with the central social media is that we have a chance to do IT again, and we have a chance to hopefully do IT Better. And this something that I didn't I didn't really talk about when I in my thinking on the paper.

And and this is something that comes up but I think that is worth addressing is that some people say, well, blue sky is a company IT is venture funded, you know it's gotto go down that same route of initiation ation um and that is a fear and I sort of view part of my role on the board is being like um stopping the signification and what representing the best uh you know the best position of the community um but you know one of thing again another thing that has impressed me about blue's guy and j is that they have within their mission this idea that the future company is a potential adversary, right? Everybody knows what happened with twitter ryme. And so they are building the protocol to be resistant to that. That doesn't mean IT won't happen, but IT is being done in a way that is much more difficult for them to initiate y and again, like I go back to the email example, where where where you know most people have a gmail account, like lots of people use gmail and some people can argue like gmail, not great. But I don't think gmail has been as initial ed as other systems because because it's .

built on the email.

because it's built on basic email protocol S T P and and what not. And so if they make IT really horrible, if they were really like they were concerns, you know, early on, oh, google is gona spy on all your email and do advertising off of IT and all this kind of stuff, they, you, they, they sometimes make experiments in that way, and then they get, you know, smacked down and step.

Because as soon as they go down this path of really making IT horrible, it's so much you know, it's just opens up the opportunity for somebody to step in and say what's easy like you can switch, you don't lose contact with anyone, right? It's hard to leave facebook. It's easy.

It's easy err to leave gmail. And so the incentive of structure is for google not to fuck up gmail. That's not to say you know gmail has its problems, but it's I think it's less less than citified than than other services.

Whereas and blue sky and the way they're designing blue sky and eighty protocol IT is designed to make IT you really difficult for future blue sky to entities y the service because if they do, all of the pieces are set up that somebody else can come in and create new, new blue sky, Green sky. What's whatever you want to call IT that everybody can just shift to with the push of a button and blue guy loses everything that they have as as a company. And so the real chAllenge now is like, can we build, you know a sustainable business and service on that without making IT awful for the users in the community on that service. And but we've built in this sort of commitment mechanism, which is if if we try and do things that is exploited, our users, which is like that's where the initiation ation curve starts. You know, you reach this point where instead of providing value.

we now have to extract you.

You've trap them now they cannot be right. And so you know, with blue sky, the whole point is like we're setting IT up, as you know, not me then, but on the port watching, they're setting IT up in a way that they're setting you a trap for themselves that says if if we try and start extracting value in a way that is awful to people, they can leave and they can destroy our business. And therefore, we can do that.

We have to build the service that is good for the community and that you provides value for the community rather than as extracting value from the community. And so that you know who knows if you work IT is you know this is a lot of this is theoretical, but you know, I think everything they're done so far has been in that, right? No, they make mistakes.

Everybody makes mistakes. But I think they're moving in the right direction with IT. And that has me really, really optimistic because wouldn't be great if we could have like all of these benefits that were talking about without you, without the awfulness and without, you know, IT all being dependent on some billion air, whose, you know, trying to buy up an island and haie whatever.

okay. So maybe I have one more question OK. What is the mechanism to stop blue sky and shifting them?

Yeah, I mean, it's basically the fact that anyone can can every every part of blue sky itself can be recreated elsewhere while still allowing you to communicate with people on blue sky, right? So IT is possible to entirely remove yourself from blue sky and still communicate with anyone else on blue sky. Uh.

and so that I would .

should be yes, right and so you know if blue sky in chief ice and does bad stuff, then somebody else gonna along and say like I don't like this know so just for example, right, if they decide to um you start inserting you terrible ads everywhere, whatever, then it's like somebody comes along as well. I'm going to a build the infrastructure that is blue sky without the ads know and they would have .

access to all the posts or the users and and .

blue sky can do anything to stop that.

That's really cool. That is a Better future, lue, but blue sky can keep users by not being shared exactly.

exactly. And so there is the chAllenge of like IT still is a company. IT is a public benefit company. So we are. Are a loud as a board like uh, you know the producer duty is to to a wider set of stakeholders, including the community, not just the investors. We can do that legally because the public benefit corporation, but like we have this technical infrastructure that says, you know, we basically shoot ourselves in the foot if we make IT shit for for the community and and you know now the trick is like can can you build a real sustainable business on top of that by actually providing value? And that's that's hopefully the next stage of of what the company is working on.

Mike, thank you so much for joining me. Where can people find you?

Um so well, thanks for help me. This was a really fun conversation. I wasn't sure I was gonna .

but I was was the .

Better of life experience um and yeah so I am obviously on blue sky and magnetic uh at M S nic B B sky that social, my cap there easy to find the on this guy, obviously a tectonic. Those those are the main thing. So if you want to read my articles with the protector, if you want to see me, you know, ranting about this or that, any point, point me on this guy.

Thanks so much. And you will now get the soon to be updated that offline links following this. Thank you for listening.

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