The Future of Twitter and Elon Musk's Vision

Elon Musk has expressed his desire to create a platform where users can interact with each other without the fear of being judged or bullied. He wants to remove engagement metrics, such as likes and comments, from the platform, allowing users to focus on creating content without worrying about how others perceive it.

This move is seen as a way to reduce online harassment and hate speech on Twitter. Musk believes that by removing these metrics, users will be more willing to express themselves freely, without fear of being ridiculed or ostracized. He also hopes to create a platform where creators can focus on producing high-quality content, rather than worrying about how many likes they receive.

However, this approach raises concerns about the potential for users to engage in discriminatory behavior, such as liking and sharing racist or hateful content. Musk's solution is to make these interactions invisible to others, allowing users to see who has liked their own posts, but not those of others. This move is seen as a way to promote online civility and reduce the spread of hate speech.

Musk also believes that his platform will become a hub for adult content, including pornography. He thinks that Twitter's existing infrastructure can be repurposed for this type of content, allowing creators to produce high-quality material without worrying about censorship or moderation.

The Verge cast discussed Musk's vision for Twitter and its potential impact on the platform. The hosts expressed their concerns about the potential for users to engage in discriminatory behavior on the platform, but also acknowledged that removing engagement metrics could have a positive effect on online interactions.

One host joked that Musk's platform would become a "porn platform" for adults who want to produce high-quality adult content without worrying about censorship or moderation. Another host expressed concerns about Elon Musk's ability to create a platform that promotes diversity and inclusion, given his own history of making controversial statements.

The hosts also discussed the potential benefits of removing engagement metrics from social media platforms. They acknowledged that likes and comments can be a double-edged sword, providing validation for some users but also creating pressure to produce content that is "edgy" or provocative in order to attract attention.

Ultimately, Musk's vision for Twitter and its platform is seen as a bold experiment in online interactions. While it raises concerns about the potential for discriminatory behavior, it also offers the possibility of creating a more inclusive and respectful online environment.

The future of social media platforms like Twitter hangs in the balance as Elon Musk continues to shape its direction. With his vision of removing engagement metrics, creating a platform for adult content, and promoting online civility, Musk is pushing the boundaries of what is possible on these platforms.

In a recent conversation with a creator, Musk expressed his enthusiasm for the idea of creating a community where creators can produce high-quality content without worrying about likes or comments. He also joked about the concept of a "saddest little black book" where he would keep track of users who engage in discriminatory behavior.

The conversation highlighted Musk's commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible on social media platforms. While his approach raises concerns, it also offers the possibility of creating a more inclusive and respectful online environment.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello and welcome to vast the flagship podcast of massive base ultimate Vibe oh no we're immediately starting there hi I'm your friend Nei Alex crans is here I'm your friend who just discovered Arc the browser yeah nobody told me about it David definitely has it repeatedly every issue of installer is like have you used this browser turns out he's right who knew David Pierce is also here although is he I just you say ultimate B and I just want to leave I just immediately know where we're going oh we're driving that car there so fast all right here's what I want to tell you it's a huge week of news uh a bunch of docks about how Google search works leaked and then they were confirmed to be real I don't want to oversell this is on the order of how the Facebook algorithm works like this is true insight into the Google search algorithm so you got to talk with that and the Fallout across the web from that uh uh Google search continues to be bananas there's a bunch of open AI news I know people want us to talk about Fox media's deal with open AI which I will to whatever extent that is interesting then we got a lightning round unsponsored for now Sam um but there's one piece of news that I think dominates the week yeah you definitely think it dominates the week and that is The Verge has received a review unit of the Sony field 7 UL speaker it's enormous it's this is the mediumsized one if you're not watching this on YouTube just imagine Nei pulled a grenade launcher out from underneath I love it so much uh it's $3.99 and as as many of you know I think the internet has eras and I think technology has eras we've talked a lot about the end of the Google search era on the internet what that might mean perhaps wor at the dawn of the AI era certainly we were in the mobile era for quite a long time the social ERA this is the UL era and what I mean by that is if the 80s were dominated by megabase and the 990s were dominated by megabase I would say that the 20s the the 2000s 210s kind of a stumble through Sony's extra base era yeah it wasn't pleasant no you know it didn't hit we're now in what Sony has called the UL era o I like that's what the buttons that's what the button says on it right here UL there's a UL button wait that Chang and uh I'm just going to turn this guy on here it's so big uh there we go it's I in fact can't see Nei through the speaker I'm told that if I hold this play button down for 5 seconds we get royaltyfree demo music you hear that YouTube royaltyfree and you guys can't see the the the lights but they're there there she goes now I don't know if you can see the amount of the speaker that is currently lit up but it's it's both drivers and then on the front the UL button is Rainbow blinking and when you push that you get massive base ultimate Vibe this is the most important product in technology do you think if you press the UL button right now the podcast would explode let's find out I got to wait for the drop to come back is this English it's sish oh there's another song oh yeah oh got so much quieter when I push the UL button is it just it just makes little drum hits when you push the can you hear that it's like a tiany I don't know man like I'm trying to sell this and it's not going great the handles are great we're turning into QVC or Tik Tok this is on our Tik Tok store right now for $400 it won't burn down your house that we know of yeah uh anyway look all I'm saying is we went from the mega base era to the extra base era which again I think was a failure I don't I mean the UL era is is not bumping so far well I mean the first song is good extra is not more than Mega and so what happened is in the mega era everybody went deaf and so couldn't hear the extra era so but now we have ultimate which all the deaf people in their 40s can hear now so it's back it look it has powerful sound with an X balance speaker unit and uh 30 hours of battery life it doesn't make the windows rattle though is it really I just think it's funny when you try to make a spec sheet for a product that is insane and you're just RGB lights next to a bullet point look it's the UL era I've never been more excited about a product in my entire life that's the vergecast everybody people have been wondering about when we're going to give a 10 out of 10 and I think it might be happening it might be time by the way this is the mediumsized one this is the seven there's also a 10 I cannot wait for that one to arrive uh they also sent us two sevens Chris Welch just has one in his house taking it most of his home I'd like to formally apologize to everyone for bringing the UL fi field s on the show um and by apologizing me and I'm sorry if you felt bad I felt great all right let's talk about the news that's what I've learned about apologies soon I'll be taking a screenshot of notes app I'm really excited I'm headed directly for that in your in everyone's career you you're like is this the screenshot of notes app yeah let's find out okay let's talk about the news there's a lot of news a lot of it is about Ai and what it is doing to the internet if you've been listening to our show or reading The Verge or listening to coder whatever you know that we've had a thesis for a while now stretching back into the middle of last year that the internet was about to get flipped over not just by AI but by search in general by social platforms falling apart I don't know if you're aware they changed the name from Twitter to X like something's happening yeah and one thing that we really wanted to do was pay a lot of attention to what things were like now so we could properly describe how they changed which meant we did a lot of SEO coverage last year covered the culture of SEO the community of SEO why the web looks like an SEO disaster how Google fights back against SEO uh Mia did a lot of that reporting for us I think I've radicalized her like you make someone care about SEO for eight months they come out a different person on the other side but Mia is done a great job of that reporting we had a great feature from Amanda Chicago Lewis the SE Community is still mad about it featured an alligator party we we'll link all this stuff you can read it the the point I'm trying to make is we felt like it was changing I think that hunch was correct right yeah yeah I mean Google kind of sucks now I'm using cogy so Google sucks now uh right there's other search products Google's rolling out Ai overviews and then over the long weekend a bunch of SEO people discovered that the API documentation for Google search had been inadvertently made public on GitHub for quite some time and there were a couple blog posts one that was just like here's how I found it here's who showed it to me uh that one's really interesting and then there's another one that's more of a deep dive into here's what it says and then there was a little bit of back and forth about is this real like can we trust what we're seeing because some of what the documentation revealed is that Google has not been telling the whole truth about how search works for a very very long time and so some of the headlines in these posts are like is Google lying to us and some of the copy in these posts is like Google has been lying to us Google was initially just totally dead silent which is weird like usually we at least get a no comment but Mia sent a bunch of emails we sent some texts hey is there anything do you want to deny that this is real dead silence then yesterday Wednesday Google confirmed the leaks they said this is real and they said and they said we would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about search based on out of contact cator and complete information basically they're saying yeah this is real but it's not super real it's a lot David you have been covering search and how it works and thinking about it you use the most browsers and search engines of anyone I know there's some real explosive information here but it's still not clear how much we should take seriously and how much Google is lying it's just a lot of angry people are suddenly like oh this is what I've been angry about yeah it's a weird moment because Google search has always been a blackbox um Google has very deliberately not revealed how Google search works and what it cares about in part because it's so complicated that it's actually a hard borderline impossible thing to sit down and explain to somebody why something is where it is in search results like I don't think any individual person at Google knows the answer to that question it's just not how the system works anymore um but also because the more Google reveals about how search works the more tools it is giving people with which to game Google search which has been the cat and mouse game they've been playing forever and so what has been happening is people have been asking Google what is going on what systems and rankings does Google care about what can I do to make my stuff rank higher in Google search and Google has given a lot of answers that these 2500 pages of internal API documents say r essentially not true like there are a series of things that Google has in these documents that it has explicitly said out loud it does not consider in search ranking are those two statements completely mutually exclusive no which is why this gets so weird right like there are I forget the exact number but it was right around 14,000 individual things referenced in these Pages which is basically like 14,000 different signals uh how those are ranked which matter more which matter less whether they're all even counted how old this information is what some of the terms actually mean very hard to know because a lot of them are terms we've never seen before that Google has been saying for years didn't exist but what what seems to be true is you don't have a a heading in your API for a thing that you don't care about and so for things that Google has for years said that it doesn't care about there is now evidence that it is at least a piece of data that Google collects and one of Wild Things is that people who do SEO spend a lot of time testing theories and they've been testing theories and people like the the guy who broke the story ran fishkin have gotten crap from people in the community for running tests and saying things like oh it seems like Google search really cares about click-through rates and people at Google saying no no no no we don't care about click-through rates you're an idiot and this overwhelmingly makes it look like Google cares an awful lot about click-through rates and so now we're in this place where I think a big part of what we've been seeing from the SEO Community is people who were like oh not only has Google not been telling us the truth they've been lying to our faces and making like gaslighting us into believing the wrong thing about how Google search works and it's a weird like existential crisis when that happens and the thing I'll just like try to chain together is we started paying attention to this story last year because we wanted to know what this ecosystem was like right like we wanted a picture of maybe like the last days of disco right like here's what it was like before the comet hits and I thought the comet would be AI or the end of social networks or Google keeping more traffic inside a featured whatever the comet is and it kind of feels like the comet is actually just knowing that Google wasn't telling the whole truth right like the headings in these blog posts like legitimately there's a a trade publication called search engine land that we've been watching a lot of the coverage of this on that site it's one of the bigger SEO trade Publications to exist and the headings are like how does SEO move on from here one of the subheadings in the piece where they run the Google statement was did Google lie to us that's just a subhead that's just a straight H2 on their story which by the way people do uh in order to be ranked higher in Google you put questions people might Google in an H2 I'm serious right and that is like push this all the way down and it's like what's inside this document is how the internet works right like people have built the internet to try to figure out how to game the stuff that is inside these 2500 pages and like you you can reverse ER the internet out of Google's API which I think is why this feels so huge like your your point about the Facebook algorithm that you've been saying all week like this is the on the order of leaking the Facebook algorithm like it is and in the way that understanding the Facebook algorithm would essentially help us understand a decade of our online relationships like this is the internet in 2500 pages of like weird inscrutable API calls and I think that's hard for people who aren't in the SEO business or our business which is kind of the SEO business to fully wrap their we make if you make a website you care about this a little bit yeah yeah yeah we have to right like it's required I I I edit buying guides I have to care a lot about SEO and people who don't care about SEO they like I go and I tell my friends I'm like this huge document like cash of documents Dro this is huge and they're like why are you what is SEO Elon mus says I'm gonna open source the Twitter algorithm and this is Front Page News the API calls or Fields basically of what data Google collects to run the ranking algorithm leaks and it's like us like freaking out yeah and it's kind of nowhere and I I like to David's point we don't know how these things are ranked that's true but we do know that Google has said for years it does not collect some of this data or care about some of this data and it definitely does what are you gonna do with that uh Rand fishkin the same person you mentioned David has got spent a long time saying it seems like this thing called dwell time is important so you click through a Google result you land on a website you're there for however long you come back to Google you go to the next one that time you spend on the website he's like that seems important and Google has basically said no Yep they're tracking that too yeah the one that I think is the most explosive which we don't really know how to understand is Click data from chrome and it's there somewhere right so one thing we know that Google does which is a little shaky is when you search for a website I think the example that came out in one of the antitrust trials was Vogue or cosmopolit it was some magazine like this yeah it was one of those yeah and you get the website and then right below it in the search result you get their headings like Beauty fashion style coverage M Gala those headings are generated by what people click on in those websites in Chrome yeah and Google has forever said it does not use data from chrome to it in pack search and then you look at these API talks you're like oh it's in there there's data from chrome like it's potential that Google is actually using that for search and they have sworn up and down to every regulator to every SEO professional to everyone that these things are not the same what are you going to do with that it's such a funny example too because like of course Google does that like this to me so much of this leak is things that you would obviously assume Google is doing except that Google has been denying doing it for years that it turns out in fact Google is doing like I'm in the business of knowing which links are good and I also run a browser in which B ions of people click links every day like at some point you'd be insane not to let one affect the other you have maybe the best possible data stream which is the links that people go to and how long they spend there which is literally that is all you could ever want to know in search rankings and so the idea that they are spread apart and not you know in any way correlated out of the goodness of Google's heart I think has always been sort of silly to people and so to some extent it's like it it just confirms what your instincts tell you in a lot of this league yeah I keep going back to Nei earlier you said this was kind of like a comet hitting and I feel like it's definitely a comment for the SEO Community but for the rest of us we've kind of been in more like high waters Rising as apocalypse it's go right like the Google the Google experience for 90% of people has just been like okay the sea levels are rising now and and it feels like this was maybe that big push in the water oh now it's covering Manhattan dang it yeah yeah I mean it it it does feel like the dam is breaking one of the things that we were talking about when we did our decoder episode recently about Google Zero was this stuff leaks because people are mad yeah and so if you were an SEO operator and you uncovered a bunch of secret data that Google was collecting you would not tell the SEO Community right like you would you would definitely keep that to yourself but instead what's happening is people are mad and they're like look at these lies or look at what we perceive to be lies yeah and there's just a lot of the the ideas that people have had about how Google search works one of them is domain Authority so a very funny thing that happens is every year I publish best printer 2024 by a Brother laser printer and it goes to the top of the rankings it goes to the top of the search rankings one uh because I have the right answer which is us should by Brother laser printer and never think about it two because I'm the best person to write about printers uh in world history no one else has written a better printer post than me I'm sorry that's just the truth certainly these two can try and I don't mean that because there's not better writers than me I mean those writers are not wasting their time about you are the perfect the perfect middle of good at your job and also interested in printer posts that has ever existed like the whole staff is better at this than me I just they won't diag yeah that's fine um and it and then everyone tweets it and shares it and people write about it because it's a joke and it's funny and it's at the top of the list and then the SEO Community says things like the virge is just taking advantage of their domain Authority which yeah yeah true that's what we're doing and then Google's like we don't have domain Authority that's not a thing we keep track of and then you look at the thing and they track something called site Authority and it's that Dynamic Authority yeah right it's just that Dynamic which is like okay like we understand that you don't want people to game search we have been very critical of SEO forms that game search again decoder this week is just about people gaming search and putting small businesses out of business but if you're not honest right then and If you deny the things are happening then the backlash is really strong the example I keep thinking about is what if every Instagram influencer woke up today and was like Instagram has been lying to us for a decade like how' that go for that platform Adam misseri just like immediately like hey guys he's not making it better I'm here with a video on why the lies were worth it yeah exactly now I got to go to the Met Galla yeah exact I mean kind of he's like my glasses are getting more expensive every day and they look fabulous they're very good um what would happen if every YouTuber I always joke that every YouTuber gets their wings when they make the video about how they're mad at YouTube would what would happen if every YouTuber was like they've been lyed to us for a decade that's that's where Google is landing with web with these links we're going to have a lot more coverage of them now that we know they're real we're going to pull them apart we're going to talk to some experts I have people from other companies in my inbox saying things like if some of this is real then Chrome is essentially spyware yeah I mean it sounds like last week we were having this whole conversation about co-pilot and how everybody was very upset because they felt like co-pilot plus PCS all the stuff that's Microsoft is doing was horrible and it was it was essentially key loggers and it's like okay well now we basically have confirmation that Chrome is a key logger well we right right we there's like a field yeah it's like if you were to make a spreadsheet and one of the things in spreadsheet would be like my friend's bank account numbers and you're like but I never filled it in yeah I just kind of wanted in case someone told me their bank account number sure I do that all the time yeah people my friends have gone out with on dates like I will I just keep Maybe maybe that's a page I want to have in my notebook right again I I I would encourage anyone who is alarmed by this to go to your Chrome history think about all the cookies that you have I mean like of course it's a key like what the hell is a browser if not a key loger uh that's literally its job is to know all the links that you've been to and all the things that you typed inside of them and I think to some extent again I just keep coming back to this idea that like Google is going to say okay we we run a search engine wouldn't it be cool if knew all the links people would go to when they weren't on Google and then somebody on Chrome is like what if we just built an awesome browser and they just it would be the most like have you met Google thing in history and to be fair if any company could accidentally keep those two things apart it is Google but like just strategically it it would be absurd for Google to do this and not actually connect those dots together right again and I think from some of the antitrust trials David you covered some of them Google's been pretty open like our engineers wanted a bunch of Click data to make the search engine better and that's SE billion right okay well a bunch of people run Windows we don't have to pay Microsoft we just have to make a browser and put it on there and now we run the biggest browser in the world and we get all the clicks like that is exactly what you would do yeah I think I think the thing is the what's different here is that everybody should understand this right like I understand that Google is reading my my emails because I signed up for Gmail in like 2004 2005 that was part of the deal you know it reads my emails to deliver me ads so I understand that most people don't and a lot of times they have these moments when stuff like this happens where they're like oh they have so much more information about me than I ever thought they did and it's just this moment for a lot of people where it's just like oh I didn't I never intellectualized this I never like fully comprehended how much these companies have about me yeah and then on on the flip side you have people who are trying to build businesses saying hey it looks like you doing this and Google saying no yeah and just flat out lying to them in a way that's like you know I don't think they Google has any interest in rebuilding trust with the SEO people right actually one of the funniest things about this is that is such an antagonistic relationship I often make the comparison to platforms like I think the web is essentially Google's platform and certainly a lot of these businesses are building their businesses on the platform known as Google search not the web right right they're they're they're search dependent businesses and Google does not have like warm and fuzzy platform Creator relationships with these folks like Adam misseri is like I'm going to sit down with the creators like look at all these great creators he's got a great sweater on right Neil Mohan who runs YouTube loves loves a Creator breakfast yeah right like every platform that depends on creators has that relationship that extracts more value than it pays them that's life and platform World they they try to mify the creators all the time Google does not try to mify website owners no because I mean at this point the the internet is reliant on Google and what Google says is hey run our ads on your site and you can have some money does that seem good but what I think is so interesting about this is like the the YouTube the sort of social platform example is really interesting because what those companies by and large have done is be inscrutable on purpose right like you you look at Adam AER responding to people who are like why didn't my post do numbers why is this one working and this one not working and they never really answer the question except to say you know do good work and and keep posting and whatever and so what you see is like the people who are successful on these platforms are the ones who are constantly running experiments in public like you remember Mr BEAST's whole thing where he was like if I have my mouth open in the thumbnail it gets more clicks like YouTube didn't tell him that these are the experiments he's running in public what Google has done that is so wild is it's it's as if Neil Mohan called Mr Beast and said shut your mouth it doesn't help and it said so it's like okay it's one to not be told the rules of the game and figure them out for yourself I actually think that relationship is like odd but fine right and it's like here here is a a black box it's your job to figure it out that is sort of the internet we live on but for Google to have spent this long denying the existence of what people are finding on their own and sort of making people question what they're finding with their own two hands in front of their own two eyes is just wild and again we should say there is a lot about how all of this works that we still don't know I think a lot of it is going to start to come out very fast because there are a lot of people who do these experiments who are now armed with a tremendous amount of new data and so I think we're going to learn a lot about how Google works really really quickly now uh but it's just it just feels so weird to hear the people who do this for a living be like yeah I've been asking these questions and being publicly lied to about how my job works for a decade that just feels crazy also we should not there are pending antitrust lawsuits against Google and lots and lots of regulators around the world who uh have been asking the same questions and getting the same kind of answers well which is another place a lot of this information is coming from by the way like the there was this thing called nav boost that came up a bunch in the in the API which talks a lot about how click-through rate and the stuff you're talking about like the the long and short clicks whether you come back very quickly from a search result or stay on the page a while uh all of that is part of a system Google has called nav boost that came up in the antitrust trial and made some noise where it's like okay this is actually overriding a lot of our other rankings is what you do once you interact with a search result and that is very different from what Google has told people yeah actually my favorite part of all this my favorite thing because it's such a good name let's be honest how do you get me you give something an adorable name um Google has spent years positioning search as a utility right not as a business that they run but as the water or electricity of the Internet it's just a neutral utility you just you just use it and we don't have any ideas about it it just we set the robots to crawl the internet and they they're just a baby yeah they just find the stuff and they show it to you and when you try to cover search as anything other than a utility the attitude from Google is like why would you do that right we want to teach people how search works and like no there's like a culture of search like the same way that there's a culture of Tik Tok right and that's been a disconnect but they have done that on purpose right because if you treat something like a utility or a neutral algorithm or just the right answer that the Google Brilliance of page rank has discovered across the web then maybe you don't poke at it too much and inside these documents we find things like nav boost as part of a system that is called twiddlers yeah twiddlers in the way to think about it is like the big Google algorithm is like the back end and right before it displays you a result the twiddlers show up and they twiddle the result we just twiddle their little and so nav boost is a Twi it's like categorized as a twiddler it's like we went and found some other stuff and we're just we're Shuffle that around a little bit and there's a bunch of those and like lots of Google systems are built as twiddlers so they have plausible deniability that the core search ranking algorithm doesn't take these factors in but right before they show them to you just a little twiddle twiddlers baby and it's like H I'm not that stupid you know it's like it's one system that displays a search result at the end where it happens like I don't think they can run around being like we were always telling the truth yeah it's just these These twiddlers are out of control right they they have no control over it they're just a baby I that's it's my favorite thing that everybody does now when they screw up they just go I'm just a baby I don't know it's my first day running search who can say yourselves anyhow we are going to learn a lot more about this I we often try not to oversell things I'm just telling you the the web the people who make the web are a flame because of these documents because they do make Google seem if not outright a liar as though they have been socially engineering a community of people who make things into not believing what they see as David is saying and I think the backlash there is going to be ferocious yeah especially as search traffic declines especially as user Behavior changes around AI especially as the AI results continue to tell people to eat glue like it's not there's not a lot of trust left in this ecosystem and it's it's to me it's weird that there's not more coverage of it it's not as sexy as the Facebook algorithm or Elon saying is an open source the Twitter algorithm but like d said this is the architecture of the internet yeah I think it is that's why it's so hard for people it it is so ingrained in how most people function that it's shocking to them to a where point where it's like I I can't even process this have to go yeah like most people I don't think fully grasp how much the goog the Google most people don't fully grasp how much Google affects their online experience they just don't they know it they see it and everything but it's just like just gloss over it and now it's like oh we're having to actually reckon with this and think about this yeah it's why I always like to talk about cooking websites uh because if you want the if you want the single cleanest example of how Google changes the way a web page works go read a recipe site uh you you will see everything you need to see you will see the H2S which Google wants because there are going to be questions that people might be Googling you're going to see the jump to recipe thing but then you're also going to see 2,000 words of nonsense about their lives because you have to actually stay on the page a long time in order for Google to believe that that's a successful search they want images that's very important to Google like you every single Pixel of that page right down to how the recipe is structured is made for Google and anyone who runs a food blog will tell you that the fundamental tension is like I did this because I like food and I actually work for Google and that feels crappy to a lot of people and now Google's going to take that stuff and show the recipes people in AI right but I do think what one more thought on this that I've I've been seeing a lot of increasingly in the SEO world and I think is a really interesting like internet question is uh one way to read a lot of what we've seen in these leaks is that SEO is dead uh and no longer will work like there let me I I copied this one paragraph out from the thing that Rand wrote um he said Google no longer rewards Scrappy clever SEO Savvy operators who know all the right tricks they reward established Brands search measurable forms of popularity and establish domains that Searchers already know and click from 1998 to 2018 or so one could reasonably start a powerful marketing flywheel with SEO for Google in 2024 I don't think that's realistic at least not on the English language web in competitive sectors like there is a there is a real defeatism to the idea that Google cares a lot about the sites that already exist the places people already go what has been going on for a long time and the idea that you can come and be new and good and smart and people will find you because that's how Google works is a dying Theory yeah I asked this question to a lot of just media people website CEOs and decoder I ask this question of Sundar why would anyone make a website you're a new Creator we're we're all gonna quit our jobs at AOL which you should do uh can't recommend it enough best decision I've ever made I I don't plan on doing it you should go get a job at a just a quit just quit um uh but that's you know that's how we find out the Verge we all work to Gadget 2010 2011 we had this idea for The Verge we all quit we're going to start a new thing we started a website like a big desktop website we didn't even have a mobile site we started a big hairy desktop website with like forums and features and all this stuff and then the mobile web came and We Shrunk down the thing and whatever but it was never a question that we would start anything but a website there were 12 of us we had a big idea we wanted to do a thing what we were gonna do will start a website I think if you get to that place in 2024 maybe some people are going to start a substack I don't think they think of those things as websites those are newsletters or independent newsletter on ghost or whatever mostly what they're going to do is start YouTube channels and Tik Tok channels yeah the the only people I see who are kind of doing that sort of thing like right leaving their jobs whatever and being like I'm going to start a website are already established Brands right like the folks who are over at Kaku 404 who were from Vice these folks just said I'm going to go and I'm going to start a new thing and I they all take that model from dead spin that became Defector yeah and and that works but that is you have to have an audience yeah that worked because they have that audience right like most people don't have that audience and don't have that scale and I think Casey's written about that a lot of like he has to work to get platformer out he has to like really put in the effort because scale is hard and it's much much harder now because of Google yeah and I those sites are all great I don't think they uh like four4 is on ghost yeah right so they're taking advantage some infrastructure for newsletter that exists that lets them be a different kind of thing but the idea that like we coded our website from scratch you wouldn't do that we're gon like build a product that is a website um I didn't do it do that in24 we it was just not a good investment in 2024 for the reason David is saying yeah um and there's you know many things have changed in the past 13 years but the idea that the new creators on the internet will not go to the open web but instead we'll go to a closed video platform I think is very dangerous and I don't know the right answer to get people back to making open searchable web properties if the biggest search engine is like screw it like Hurst we'll just everyone can go read- Meredith like whatever you know like maybe that's the right outcome and maybe that's just the closing of the web but I again the reason we started covering it last year is because I was like oh the comment's coming and the more we covered it like oh the comment's coming like we should capture this moment and it feels like again I thought the comment would be AI I thought that I did not expect it to be like everyone is this mad it just feels like we we'll see how it goes we're going to cover a lot more it I think the other browser makers Regulators there's just a flood of negative emotion about how Google has behaved that it might just it feels like it's coming to a head I I do have one question for you guys especially you David because you use a lot of different search engines are any of them good like do any of them when you go and you search something actually give you those unique results that used to be like oh yeah now I know what I'm doing on this this search engine um yes and no uh kogi which is the one you mentioned which is also what I use it's 10 bucks a month it's excellent I cannot recommend it enough paying for a search engine feels ridiculous but it's worth it uh has a thing that it calls small web where it actually deliberately built a like crowdsource database of sites that aren't The Verge and aren't like big mainstream news sites the kind that dominate search results but are like people's blogs and little alternative news sites and local newspapers and all that kinds of cool stuff and you can you can toggle the search just to that and I think the the sort of big omnius search is never coming back from what it is now it's you you it's just interface changes really like I think kagi stuff is better than Google but mostly just because it's nicer thing to use than Google is at this moment especially in Arc yeah but where we are now is like the the only solution is going to be to artificially decide which part of the web you want to look at because all of the signals for the rest of the web are are starting to break away from that like find and explore new things Vibe because that's harder to do and harder to measure than oh people generally believe that Nei is right about which printer to buy and that's actually like a pretty easy thing for a search engine to believe and send you to over and over again yeah and we will continue ruthlessly using our domain Authority we will I love to break big printer David I can't remember who was you who said this Casey might have said it to me in passing we used to think of surfing the web as a fun thing to do and all of Google's messaging at IO was let Google do the Googling for you yeah which makes it seem like work MH it's like no this is how I wasted time do you know how much I didn't pay attention in law school because I was just browsing the we class like that's a it's weird that we've made the web this unpleasant and the platforms figured it out and hopefully we can get some of that back I don't know if we can we're going to keep running a website we're not we do have a Tik Tok for as long as Tik Tok B but all right we're going to keep using our domain authority to crush big printer hell yes just ruthless ruthless domain Authority abuse uh but that's our mission here at the merch we got to take a break we'll be back all right we're back the the post credit scene on this episode of the brast on YouTube is g to be great it is that's all I can say that's all I'm allowed to say it's lightning round one according to our rundown the AI lightning round so there's a bunch of wwc rumors about what's going to happen with open AI uh they've apparently Inked their deal Google had a bad week last week we should talk about that more Google um gpts are open now with open AI store there's a lot but I know people want us to talk about our press release Fox media's press release uh which is that like many media companies VOX media signed a content in technology deal with open AI the Atlantic had one on the same day it was like Fox Med Atlantic were in the headlines together I know David what you run you interview me yeah so okay I think the the big question to to me is both uh how do we feel as people who work at a company with a deal like this and what is this what does all this mean about the media in general so I think like we we just had a conversation earlier with a bunch of the folks in our Newsroom talking about this stuff and and I think I want to know for you as somebody who runs a newsroom you didn't make this deal uh you I assume will at some point see the contract because you like in about contracts I don't think thing you do from I sincerely doubt that is true I'll do my best it is more likely that I will see someone else's contract before I see our own companies oh that's interesting that's a that's a fun reporting tactic can I can I bully my boss before I can bully somebody else like there our company's very good at being like no you can't just report on our own company other companies like here's the stuff like yeah it that's just the way of being a reporter yeah that that's fair but so I I am curious for you as like a a newsroom leader how you even think through what a deal like this means sure uh we do a lot of disclosures on this show famously I think uh I've had journalism professors talk to me about the fact that our disclosures are running joke with the audience like we want to be really transparent about where information comes from reasons to not trust us if you don't want to trust us like my goal is always to just empower the audience with information that's the top level so like if you're listening to this and you've listened to the show that's why we do disclosures that's why they're a joke like I want the only currency we have as a news organization is trust so we're trying to that's why we have the background policy right all the spokes people have to use their names when they talk to us because we don't want to pretend we know something that they just told us right if Google or apple or Microsoft or whoever wants to talk to us and get some information on our Pages they need to be accountable for it not us and that's just trust that's just who are you going to trust where does a trust go who do you have to trust for to believe the story so that's the top level right next to that which I think the audience doesn't see as much because why would you is our Newsroom has to not think about it like that's actually what Independence is right is not I know that our company has a deal or an investor and I'm just going to like I'm going to think about it as I write the story the goal is they don't think about it at all right and we just go do the reporting and we publish what is true or what we believe or what we think people should know right and that that the in any traditional Newsroom that's the what is called the firewall right so we do stuff our sales team there's advertising over we just came back from an ad break right like and that but we don't know what the ads are I don't know what ads just played I get so many emails about the crypto ads I don't know man yeah like I think crypto's stupid like what do you want me to do like that's that team and if we open the door and start telling that team what to do the danger and this is a danger that is proven out over and over again in newsrooms around the world if we open the door and start telling them what to do they're like hey that door's open right we're going to start telling you what to do so we just keep the door closed this is why you have the firewall it works in both directions so for me and I understand open ey in particular is pretty shady company I feel like our entire episode last week was like this company is pretty shady we're talk about um like whatever um fine but like that's the commercial side of our company and I understand like I've talked to a lot of media Executives like I'm running around covering Google Zero I've been talking to a lot of media people lately and I can talk about that bigger question David of like are these good deals are these like a good idea broadly because I think I've done some reporting I have some thoughts about that but the thing that like when our press release went out like no we're not going to change our recover open a yes I think when it's appropriate we'll disclose it it's not like a like Comcast is an investor in our company right like we disclose it every time we whisper about Comcast because they're an investor this is a licensing deal like we have a lot of those across our company I don't want to just get into a situation where I'm like disclosure Yahoo licenses an RSS feed of the dodo like what do you want like I think that door can get too open we can overread it so would go a little long it would go a little long um and I want to preserve our independence and what Independence really means to me is yes we'll disclose it yes we'll earn everyone's trust but I would prefer it if we were just covering open AI without thinking about it and so that's that's the balance I'm trying to strike I'm open to people's thoughts about how much you need from us to continue having that trust um but it is in many ways like more of a normal deal than people are expecting right like when when we did a Netflix show I think there was less outcry but like I was the producer of a disclosure I made a Netflix show every time you should watch you should watch a Netflix show uh David and I are gonna make one just so that we that was like way Messier right like I'm going to meetings at Netflix about our show I wasn't allowed to talk about until our show was made um so I want to make sure we like find the right balance and I understand there's just a lot of feelings about Ai and open AI in particular but like at the end of the day the goal for all of these media companies is to just get some control back out of a situation that felt out of control what situation is that well they took everything anyway right right that's the situation and we can talk about that broadly I just want to separate the two things like our Newsroom is independent open AI did not buy any control of our Newsroom we will be very honest with everybody when we think the disclosure could affect how you perceive one of our stories and I think that you know around copyright LW like that makes sense to me we're going to write a story about the New York Times lwuit against open that is a great place for disclosure opena launches a new GPT feature like I don't know you tell me maybe we need to do that every time but like I I I don't want to overread it as though to make it seem like we're doing something we're not um so that's it that's like my Top Line like we will have a disclosure I love a disclosure disclosure Comcast is an investor in box media uh I'm in a Netflix show disclosure Alex CR is the last remaining Paramount plus subscriber it's true hi um look I this is our brand and we're going to do them I just the thing that I am trying to be careful about is separating how people feel about these deals broadly and what it means for our Newsroom right what it means for our Newsroom is the status quo like it is not changing we are GNA operate without fear or favor and again my goal is to earn everyone's trust by being as transparent as can be and I just want to make sure that we're not so transparent that we actually go in a full circle and No One Believes us so like you tell me where you think the line is I'm open to the feedback I I asked for it from our staff today I'm asking for it from the audience today um but the the main thing is not changing which is I want I I would prefer it if our reporters were not worried about an opening ideal or thinking about it and we just covered the company like we have been for a long time yeah and this is a thing we should say like a thing I've learned about the media business over the years is that it's very unusual in the sense that like that tension you're describing between the work that we do and where the money comes from is like good and healthy and should always exist and the our editorial and sales team should always like hate each other a little bit it's like a useful thing uh but also like we have tech company ads all over our website like that is that is a it's it's a not dissimilar thing and it is it is just something you have to navigate and get comfortable with and like people always like sending us the stuff where I we we'll make a about how terrible Facebook is right before a Facebook ad like it's my favorite thing it's so fun uh but I do want to talk about the broader piece of this because I think the I think you're right that the reaction I saw out there was less like you know I say one more thing we're not going to start publishing a bunch of AI content who hello no I think people see partnership and they're like for printer post yeah yeah I'm the only person who's put AI content on those website both posts were about printers you I wish you people would get madder at me about it and make that post go even more viral no one will do it we will only use AI to ruin our domain Authority in Google search uh it I'm sure we're going to end up building some like there's one thing that all of us want which is we would like better alt text on our images to make them more accessible to make the site more accessible we would like our site to be better for screen readers right now that's a lot of very manual work if we can use some of these tools to make that better make our site more accessible that's a great outcome come right I don't know if that's going to work right now our creative team tells me like this all text is not good enough um and AI everybody it's just not good enough yet but if we can start to build that stuff that's great so I there's that part of it which I think is interesting I don't know what that looks like I haven't talked to our product team about any of that stuff yet um but the other part where the Verge is just the Verge that's going to remain exactly the same today as it was yesterday yeah okay let's talk about the Brer side of this because I think there are there are two pieces of the should media companies be making deals like this with open AI question that I find very interesting we should talk about both of them the first is um haven't you idiots learned your lesson from making these deals with companies like Facebook and Google and everybody else who promised you money to save journalism and in fact forced you to do a bunch of stuff pulled out the rug and kind of screwed up the industry the second is um aren't you guys don't you realize that AI is out to put all of you out of jobs and just take your information use it in training data and then get rid of you why are you ushering in the journalism apocalypse and I think to some extent those are like two versions of the same question but I think are like the big picture things going on here like are we contributing to our own downfall or are we chasing money at the expense of doing anything that is smart or long-term thinking I mean the media industry never does anything yeah this the media industry is not known for for really good businesses a vanity project the thing we have talked a lot about on this show is that we the media industry as a whole probably should have spent more time over the last decade building Facebook competitors than making Facebook videos and I think like my hope is we have learned that lesson and that the next minute of the journalism industry will be learning that lesson and executing on it which is I think part of why we're so excited about the ferse because it's a thing that opens up possibilities for new kinds of media products uh is there a fear that open Ai and the like AI search engine stuff that is inevitably coming is just the next pivot to video and everybody falls for it and gives up on building new things for five more years yes okay so here's I just I'm gonna bracket our company because they did not talk to me this which is like that's the firewall yeah but uh Nick Thompson who is the co of the Atlantic has published a bunch about why the Atlantic did the deal he made a video about it you can go watch on LinkedIn um Nick used to be the editor-in chief of wire DAV used to work for Nick I did ni uh Nick knows he knows yeah he gets it I Nick and our friends he he knows he he understands what he's doing um Axel Springer has signed one of these deals the financial times has signed one of these deals a lot of these companies are signing these deals my understanding of the deals from the reporting not from the digging around our company but from the reporting is twofold one we just spent a whole bunch of time talking about Google uh Google is a fair use argument right we're going to come and index all of your information we're going to show it to people in return you'll get traffic and everyone said H that's a little a little squeaky but okay and then Google won a bunch of cases against different mediate organizations that did not like this idea yeah we're going to index every book in the world and show to people and the book publishers like no you're stealing our stuff and Google one that case uh Google we're going to index all the images on the internet bunch of porn Publishers said no that's we don't want you to do that and they were not the most sympathetic defendants in the world Google won that case Google said we're going to put every episode of South Park on YouTube and Viacom said no and then they started posting episodes of South Park to YouTube on their own and they lost that case that was not a great legal strategy but that's what they did but that all of Google that whole platform Dynamic was we're going to take your stuff and we're I pay you and we you'll get something you'll get you we'll pay you an exposure yeah in that uh look around so I think I think a lot of the reaction right now is well we cannot let that happen again we need some rules I think a problem for all these companies is that open Ai and Google and whoever else anthropic um perplexity you name it they've all taken it anyway yeah yeah they they have it llama scraped on the internet every Facebook video we've ever made is in llama built a tool to scrape YouTube for more data like like that's just how it's done yeah I think you know abson our own company I know nothing about the deal Beyond we don't keep say it we have one there it is there's your disclosure Fox Media has a content and Technology deal with open I think you're right where it's like it is a thing of they everybody it's already been taken it's already gone everybody it's like the cat is out of the bag right um Genie's out of the bottle whatever euphemism you want to use there it's happened and now it's okay what do we put a price on that and a lot of these companies we're we're starting to hear more about the price there we're starting to hear what it is and that might not end up being the right price right like like these deals might not be the right deals but they are Deals they are money where there wasn't money um I think a really interesting thing is how do you set the right price what is the value they've already trained on it yep what is deal for now one of the things that has come out about these deals which are all from what I understand they're all basically the same structure I think the the News Corp deal is like $250 million over five or 10 years right most of the other deals are $10 million over five to 10 years or something like that um I it's five um the main thing that has come out about them is that they govern how much can be displayed how the information is displayed how it's attributed what links are in it and you look at that and I what I see is a honestly a reaction to Google which has gone from We're linking to your stuff to we're going to cut out your stuff and put it in featured Snippets to we're going to have our AI rewrite whatever and just show you the answer and never send you a click and then you'll eat glue and there's nothing you can do about it because we're indexing your website every single day all right and there's nothing you can do about it because there's no contract right so I what I have heard and what I see is like that control and I think Nick again Nick Thompson at former of wired who knows uh has been public about this and his announcement the Atlantic that control is the thing because if you go beyond that you don't have to go invent some copyright argument you have a breach of contract claim and that's much easier to litigate the other thing that I see happening all over the industry and we made an entire decoder episode with sah Jong and I um about how all of AI rests on a totally shaky copyright fair use argument that could blow up at any moment yeah like open eye your business could blow up at any moment because you have weird ideas about copyright law no one can afford to litigate these ideas so the New York Times sued open a ey someone famously uh they spent a million dollars on that lawsuit so far public company we we just know the answer um to get nothing like they haven't they haven't achieved an outcome yet they just done they could lose and they could lose so that's a coin flip New York Times big public company they run a very successful video game service maybe the most successful online game service of all is the New York Times wle just paying the bills for this lawsuit um most media companies do not have just some cash cow cooking website or gaming service to fund a lawsuit about their journalism and so I think they're all looking looking at the Times lawsuit they're saying well this is going to take 5 years this is going to take 10 years it might go to Supreme Court they might lose hopefully the times wins if they win our contracts will expire right around then and we'll renegotiate with the strength of this copyright precedent and if they lose we'll just reup our deal yeah and I I see that playing out as most media companies cannot afford to go litigate these deals and and importantly no one can afford to sue Google yeah like Google's got infinite money um and I I know everyone's talking about open ey and I know whatever disclosure open ey has a Content technology Fox Media I would just we just spent that whole first segment about Google which is the thing it's the 800 pound gorilla everyone on the web operates in the universe of Google including open AI right open has made Google dance it's a barad quote but they're still it like Google's the big profitable ultra high margin company and open AI doesn't make a dollar as far as I understand right they're they're still losing money so you just there's a there's a difference there in how these companies are perceiving their antagonists and I think they can get open ey to come to the table and eventually what they're going to do is they're going to go to Google and they're going to say pay us your competitor is paying us our traffic is dropping and if it continues to drop we're going to let we're going to pull the plug on you indexing our website and I don't know how long that's going to take maybe it'll never happen happen because the threats are effective but you just see that's where the trend line is headed and then you'll see you'll only get the URL for buy this one printer Neel recommends I'll sell you one link Google um but that's that's like broadly how I see the the dynamic of this playing out is the copyright I care a lot about copyright law the copyright argument is so uncertain on both sides of the coin that people are trying to buy some certainty so that they have leverage to go negotiate against the real power in the ecosystem makes logical sense to me I also think it might be wildly optimistic about who is actually going to extract anything from Google I like our media Executives I think they're brilliant it it should be clear I think Nick is very smart most media Executives no I I mean like a players even the thesis is good right like I I I buy the thesis as far as it goes I just think there is not a lot of evidence that says anyone can pick a fight with Google and win because we are in this I mean like you keep harping about Google Zero like when that happens and people have nothing to lose by picking that fight with Google they might start to pick that fight with Google right now if I just say you can't crawl my website anymore overwhelmingly I go straight out of business yep yep that's what I mean that's this is what I'm saying like the trend lines right but the that trend is so slow it's so so slow it's slow and it isn't slow I think for some Publishers it's it's super slow for others it's not right if if you're seeing shakiness in your Google results and you're seeing Ai overviews and you're like maybe Google zero is real or you're a midsize publisher right which are not getting these deals right now it's all the big Publishers are getting this deal but somewhere down the road the midsize Publishers I assume will get the deal um or be offered a deal or go ask for a deal who knows at some point right the trend line of our Google traffic is going down AR investment in caring about you is no longer worth it and they're paying us money like I I I just that is it's a destabilizing factor in all these conversations where there have never been destabilizing factors for about a decade yeah and so we'll just see like um the last time this happens this is the negative argument I'll give everyone the negative argument David wrote about this he wrote about Google amp at the beginning of last year because I was like we got to start with what Google has done to the web Google did Amp because Facebook shut up and said do instant articles and put all of your articles directly into our platform and they'll load really fast on Native on the web and we'll send a shitload of audience to them and Google freaked out and did Amp and then all the Publishers had do amp and this was a disaster just broadly all the way around a disaster and then Facebook was like we hate news and they're like actually what we hate is text all of you make videos and everyone pivot to video this equal growing disaster amp turned out to be a huge mess and you couldn't do anything good uh it actually spread misinformation because all the websites look the same I go on about this for days and days and days Google is there there again yep they're afraid of something and so like the ripple effect of that I think is interesting and I think what most of the Publishers that I've talked to what they're interested in is can we make them not copy In Articles amp but copy payments for search because that's what they all want um one thing we haven't talked a lot about on the show um is a bill in the United States called the jcpa the journalism competition preservation act it's funny you would think that the Publishers could all get together and and do and say we're going to pull our content from Google search they have a lot of Leverage if they do it all together you get a lot of Leverage what's left they can't because that would be collusion under the antitrust laws yep uh which is incredible uh so the jcpa is I think it's a cloar bill uh that would create an exemption for Publishers to bargain with large platforms like over a billion in Revenue one of those numbers that like makes it Google and Facebook mhm yeah it's one of those ways of saying Google Facebook without saying Google Facebook it would create an exception to antitrust law so that they could bargain as a unit against large platforms or they could just like rule that Google has built a monopoly yeah there's a lot of that there's there's just a lot of these ideas floating around about how you equalize the bargaining power um anyway I that's I just see the bigger picture which is the Raw Deal is real like people got burned super hard by the Raw Deal of the platforms most of which were will give you some money with no contract that says where the money will come from the Facebook news Partnerships or the Google News initiatives or it was make a thing for us that we want Facebook video or it was we're going to take your stuff for free and pay you an exposure which is Google search and I what I see now is we have a contract yeah right we're just not doing this again you're you're going to pay us money we're going to tell you what you can take and if you don't pay us enough money we'll see you and if you take too much we'll see you and that has a little bit of teeth I don't know if it'll work again I know a lot of media Executives Alex used to work for some of the worst media Executives in game I sure media it's not like they're not all this is not an industry that can see the long game and it's an industry that's under pressure so it might be making mistakes but I I see the difference here I don't know if these are good ideas I don't know if they feel great right like there's a lot of the response yesterday and to all these other deals is do these feel great no but I I think I can identify the differences and I think at least what I see um is well they took the anyway like some money is better than no money yeah and a lot of the deal for a long time was no money that that's definitely where I'm sitting it's like some money is better than no money but also one I want to just point out this is a lightning round and we've been on nei's Lightning sorry sorry sorry for a while and so I want to take over for my life lightning round oh yeah okay you which is also about open AI of course it is because I called it um I just back when when open AI there was the coup and a bunch of the board members were like we we don't like Sam we're firing him everybody gathered around Sam was like no you are baby we love you come back he's now back in charge more powerful than ever right like that that's that's the reporting allegedly like information just said open AI CEO sub control so like that's happening they started they fired all the safety people or pushed him out and start safy committe and he's the head of the safety committe yeah that's that's a choice Sam but uh Helen toner who was one of those board members who who voted to have him kicked off kicked out and then left because he won uh was on a podcast this week and was like yeah we just didn't trust him yeah like he he just was so consistently not telling us the truth we we just lost all trust in him and that is really really interesting to think about as he does cement more power as he does get more powerful as he does put himself in charge of safety at the company and all of those people who were in charge of safety have left and as that company is still technically run by a nonprofit that's whole job is to protect us all from AI like oh buddy yeah that's not working for you I'm actually I'm curious it's been like the scarl Johansson situation has not there's been no new pieces of information it's been pretty quiet on that front yeah that's not going to just end no right it ends with a settlement or a statement or an apology well she's going to do a partnership with open AI as well like no um uh she has some great ideas for all text yeah um but like the the backlash to AI in general but I'll give you this um little data point uh I think there's a real Gap in how people feel about the thing and then what people are doing uh we've never gotten so many sort of like unhappy notes about a deota episode is when we had the co of Adobe on we had some happy ones too people want to hear from that guy he doesn't give a lot of interviews I asked him what he thought a photo was he doesn't know um but then we got a lot of people are like screw this guy yeah we just don't like Adobe we don't like AI like they're ruining everything his comment sort AI are offensive um weird weird right there's a real backlash day I there's negativity one thing he told me that episode um was generative fill is used as much as layers they launched this tool and it is used on the order of layers in photo which is basically people open the app yeah that's how you get layers you open the app like you open the app and then like people use it and so there's a real Gap and I think Sam kind of embodies the Gap yeah right which is he's just the face of boy we're not being very careful with this he's the face of I can do whatever I want cuz I'm so someone's going to call him the bad boy of AI soon I'm sorry I just no there's nothing about his demeanor that supports bad boy I'm sorry it's just not can't it's not GNA happen I'm sorry there's they're much better contenders for bad boy than Sam um but like he's the face of that de yeah which is actually the revealed behavior of many people is that the tools are useful they can be helpful people like them like I'm the nation's foremost hand ringer of what is a photo and I definitely use generative eraser in Lightroom yesterday that's for a family photo that I shared with no one I would use it all the time um Aid noise in Lightroom I think is Magic I I've talked about it has recontextualized how I think about some of my old cameras yeah we were talking about this earlier today where I think a lot of people don't realize how many of the tools we actually use are already AI right like like grammarly is using some sort of a I um Photoshop is all Ai and if you've been using Photoshop for the last 10 years you've been using AI yeah it's there but but I think you're right where it's Sam Alman has become the kind of this the center point and and everybody's talking about him and they're talking about they don't trust him and they don't trust the kind of AI he's doing which is very specific kind right it's it's taking over your search it's uh providing just easy generative content in a way that most AI tools that people use have a very specific purpose and are used for very specific things and he's built the libot and you know open I had this incredibly Byzantine corporate structure was all meant to box in the bad things box in the libot and keep the liot keep it safe and he's torn all that down yeah and now open eye instead of being this weird nonprofit with a profit Center that supports the nonprofit is feels like just Sam alman's company it's called open AI like I I would just I would just point out like their whole thing was being the good guys for so so so long and they made it so far on big Promises of being the good guys and then just like on a dime turned and went the other way I mean wild how fast this has happened right GPT 3.5 hit they're like oh people like this we're evil now just they just put on their little evil helmets but so the interesting thing is they don't again they don't have any Revenue right like this company is not wildly profitable they might be on a path to it they make all this is not important you you've been covering Tech too long to know that did not realize that revenue is not important as long as people will keep giving you money you don't need Revenue which is why I think they make all this noise about AGI all the time right they're like we're we built the future people will keep giving you money uh the number one the funniest uh GPT apps are at now um for everybody and I was just looking the top one in Lifestyles an astrology app and I was like oh this is actually a perfect use case for AI yeah like you be like I'll just make some up about your future uh yeah we should talk about that so WDC is coming up there was some reporting this week that Apple has made the deal to sign with open aai that open will power the stuff interestingly there's some back and forth about whether it will run locally on the phone which should match Apple's privacy promises or go up to the cloud which is fascinating because more powerful more powerful but where will it run there's some reporting I think Mark Gman in Bloomberg reported that they're going to put M2 Ultras or M3 Ultras in a Data Center and have a virtual Black Box oh boy for privacy that that works out every time uh who knows it gives real like Bieber running Mac Minis on your behal Vibes yeah uh and then you've got open ey the mix which is like where's this model going to run can it run on the M2 Ultra or M3 Ultra or whatever um I mean no you can't fit the thing on your phone I'm very confident that you cannot run GPT 40 on your phone locally right but can you Hort it to arm like this thing right right now runs on Nvidia h100s a lot of them yeah like a lot of them uh and you know what two companies hate each other with the fury of a thousand burning Suns is NVIDIA and apple yep but they're also two of the best people at making processors that can handle AI stuff right except for gpus one of them is really good one of them really good at use the other one the other one just took the training wheels off it's I can play Crusader Kings on my laptop so I'm just very curious about how all this will play out because if you're going to run gbd4 there's a chance you're running it on a bunch of h100s in a Microsoft data center which is a real weird place for Apple to be well I thought German's piece this week about about the the deal was also kind of interesting because it seemed to be like they're not going to go full out with all the AI tools it what we're going to see from them at WWDC as far as AI goes is going to be a lot more Adobe like than yeah Scarlet I don't think they're going to chatot and I think that is the right move yes oh that's so fun I totally disagree really I think they are going to go full hard with Siri and I think that's the open AI play is just take the Siri you can talk to and plug it into GPT 40 and instantly it's the best Siri has ever been uh then how you scale that down to like turning off Bluetooth which is a thing that I can do on my phone that does not require the internet is becomes a really interesting AI challeng you just described like the promise of Bigby I mean what what I use Siri for almost exclusively is playing music adding reminders to the reminders app and setting timers and none of those things require pinging GPT 40 they just don't uh but I think Apple like everyone else is going to have to convince investors that it has a chatbot play in order to survive not survive but you know what I mean it's Wall Street wants to see that you have some big new fangled idea and so they're going to do it because they feel like they have to all the interesting AI stuff is going to be the like on device stuff and that's a thing that we're already seeing Apple do well just by putting AI features into Apps you're going to see a lot of it with photos there's a lot of uh noise around AI generated Emoji that's the kind of thing you don't really need open AI for that actually Apple has been working on for a long time the the only reason I can see that you would strike a deal like this with open AI is if you want to blow out the like conversational aspect of things it just FES so much in the face of Apple's security stuff like yeah but so does the Google deal like that's true that's true but the Google deal like we didn't know the terms of the Google deal for years right and whereas this was a fairly public deal with open AI really close it's just been better Ed on because open is the leakiest company in the history of the world just like just holes Everywhere by the way it's only the M2 Ultra this was driving me crazy I kept saying M3 Ultra they because they're on the M4 now so I just assumed they just got a lot of M2 M2 Ultras where they stopped with the they're like is this as good as an h100 open AI tell us I think Apple knows that the idea of the behind is an external perception of the company and they're watching they're watching companies kind of light their brands on fire and not they're just never going to do that they are cautious to the extreme in that way I think this I think this Crush ad disaster for them which was not even about AI it was an iPad app yeah that everyone decided was about AI uh I think they saw that and they were like no like we're we're going to do some stuff in photos and some stuff in emojis well there's going to be stuff in search so I'm sure yeah there's going to be like some like light dusting remember last year where they're like the keyboard has AI in it now and it's like this keyboard is dumb yeah it real bad it's like still pretty bad um they're going to do that kind of thing yeah and I think it might be everywhere they might announce more features but that last turn where it's like do you want to bang an iPad like I don't I don't know if we're gonna get there this time I I think they're very comfortable with the perception that they're quote behind because they're I I think they're watching Google I think they're watching the reaction to their own advertising and this stuff is not ready and the culture around it is too negative that is just my sense from you know just talking to folks but I don't I don't know if I don't know what they're actually going to announce I look forward to we're gonna be there live uh and we're we're doing a podcast in copertino uh and I am going to spend a lot of time gloating on that show about how right I was and I'm really looking forward to it I I really hope David's wrong just so I can gloat I just that's it but I hope you're right for you spiritually David I just I think if you're worried about the stock price of your company and I know that they are you look at what is happening at Microsoft and you say oh we need something like that and what they'll say is they'll make a lot of noise about like all the stuff you can do inside of apps and then it will come around to and also it wants to be your best friend let's hang out also serious Hornet now Tim be like woo can you imagine just imagine Tim Cook being like in serious horny now yeah just flirty with Siri I love it looks Kevin R dead in the eyes all right we got this is this lighting round has ended up in strange places but it's been a good one we'll be right back we have yet another unsponsored lightning round how long is this episode now four hours we're going to talk about ourselves more for another hour three we are currently at 81 minutes all right we gotta we gotta we gotta bring this to a close lightning round style I'm going to bring up the UL power 7 or whatever it's called is that your lightning round this is my lightning round it's been more like a lot of lightning this God this the Sony logo is slightly holographic it looks kind of like oh you're like oh is it lit up no Holograms sometimes I remind people that the verge's entire competitive differentiation is that we love gadgets and I'm telling you this is our entire competive differentiation yeah we both we we freaked out over it for a minute nobody's going to sponsor the lightning round if you just pick up a speaker and talk about how terrific it is every week like get that money from Sony before you do that man come on I don't know how there's a firewall between edit and sales they keep telling me that there's incoming lightning around I think all of our sponsors are going to be like a month late being like remember that time Nei got really weird with our speaker on air Sony I I wish I knew how I think Sony will love your lightning round look if if you're Phil Sony or whoever runs Sony give us a call someone is here to take your call Mega base Ultimate Sound or whatever power Vibes whatever it is power Vibes you all right cray you get I I I ran you over on the last one you get the first one yeah um so it's it's gonna be a gadget and that Fitbit has a new watch for kids the ace the ace the ace LTE and is it a way for you to track your children with GPS yes yes um do you feel comfortable about that I don't know I'm not you if you do this probably is not an exciting gadget for you but uh it seems really cool because it like gamifies Fitness in what appears to be a really nice way Victoria song went and got to check it out I've heard from some other people have gotten to check it out and everybody's just like no this thing rules and I kind of want one for myself yes and like that's the Hallmark of a good ass gadget for kids yeah like you you can take the the band and replace the band and there's like a little tamagachi kind of thing in the watch and so when you replace the band it'll like change it's stuff it's it's sick all adult fitness trackers are like let's talk about your VO2 max and this one's just like make the cool little guy go and like that's how you get me to do stuff come on exactly like this this thing just kind of rules um except it is way too expensive it is $229.95 and it's also called the HTE which is like the least cool kid name I've ever heard it's real bad and also you need a data plan to to get the full richness of it called the ace pass oh boy and uh it is not cheap it is like $10 a month oh that's tough so you I'm G to stick with just putting an air tag yeah just you can you can alternatively stick an air tag in your child and give them a 20-year-old tamagachi there you go and done yeah we're not yet we have not yet hit the let's put an air tag on her what if you glue the air tag to the kagachi I see that's the or 3D print some sort of case I bet Shawn could do that for you yeah no there's there's infinite this is the the entire Etsy economy is weird AI generated crap and then 3D printed stuff it's beautiful and place it you can put your air tag on anything there is a case for it if you want to attach your air tag to a thing you can find a case for it on Etsy yeah all right David what's yours uh I just want to talk about this like slightly weird Discord blog post this week uh the company basically announced it's pivoting back to video games I didn't know it left so this is the thing so in 2020 when Discord was like really feeling itself and there was noise that Discord was going to be acquired for I think like10 billion it was it was the the work from home moment world the world was weird we try not to talk about that period of 2020 very often uh Discord like announced that it was going to be more than just a gaming thing right it wanted to be a a community app for the future of the world and Discord actually has like gotten a lot of things about building a community app really right there are a lot of things about it they're very clever uh I don't think that worked except that people started planning like crypto and crimes in Discord more yeah it turns out there's a lot of like shitty communities out there yeah and not a lot of like Fortune 500 companies running on Discord so anyway so the company pivoted back and is now about gaming again but then made a bunch of small changes that don't really change anything and then said they want to be easier for connecting either before during or after playing a game and I would just point out that's all the time that's still just everything so I think I'm just in a strange place where it was like I forget who it was but somebody in our slack was saying like this is not a message to users this is a message to investors of like we get it it's fine we're we're running away from crypto please stop doing crimes in Discord uh and but I just thought it was very funny it's like Discord was like we will remain Discord just like please only only do games here please yeah I did learn new things from that blog post I didn't know you could have Discord on like the PS5 yeah just clearly I don't like ultimately you can deploy a web app anywhere sometimes you're like what if I deployed this on the PS5 and you're like why it's because it's got a sick process looks cool I mean discord's a really good chat app part of me which is gone more mainstream and instead of like the 50 WhatsApp group chats I'm in I was in a bunch of discords like I feel like I'd feel cooler but alas no I'm in a couple a bunch of discords you're not crimes you're fine I don't do enough crimes no crimes I don't do enough nfts or crimes oh no Alex I'm guessing you're in at least one Flex related Discord I I I'm not but but I did think of the some crimes have definitely happened in some disc I've seen uh by the way Jason was on decoder a while ago uh basically previewing all this if you want to listen to talk about it I was I spent a lot of time being like crimes happen here and he's like I need it to stop like more or less uh and he said to me a really interesting stat he's like most discords are like three people it's just like three or four friends hanging out in a Discord and that's like the vast majority of Discord activity and then the big ones are like for other stuff right um but we talked about why they make games and their app platform and all this stuff and he's like we just do that to dog food like features for the big games all right I'm going to pick one I wanted to pick iix it and Samsung breaking up and uh other repair companies are starting to say they can't pick Samsung stuff either that's boring what I want to pick is uh X the platform formerly known as Twitter now hiding likes wait what I missed this it's very good so they're not hiding likes they're hiding who liked something so you know people used to go on Twitter and like like something you can see all their public likes they're hiding that they're hiding replies they're doing this because Bros keep liking porn yeah that's not that's all the funniest stuff on Twitter that was the best like when Tim Ted Tim Cruz Ted Cruz like was like I love this it's very good uh it is the funniest sign of a platform in Decline that its user base is now so stupid they don't even have fake accounts to like porn I was hearing about there's there's some apparently some some male reporters who love to to like models on Instagram and they don't know that they get the little the Emoji also is shared on threads so uh pretty good be be thoughtful if you're going to be horny don't be horny on Main look how do you increase Android phone sales buy a burner phone to do horny stuff all right are you listening to me Google that's what the pixel is for horny stuff it's pretty good actually buy a burner pixel just for the horny stuff a reer pixel five with that beautiful red case it's it's available to you it's just an idea I have to increase your sales save your company um Twitter X is saying um you soon you'll be able to like without worrying who might see it we want to encourage people to like more edgy content they use the word edgy wow we want you to like your porn more often uh I'm if you are the sort of person who describes your own work as edgy not edgy like I don't know it's like it's like Sam Alman is the bad boy of it's like he can't be like he would love it he would like it so much that he'll never get it Elon wants Twitter to be edgy so much he'll never have it uh I just think this is truly one of the funniest changes any social platform has ever made there's like other reasons right like I'm I'm confident Elon wants the weird racists who now populate Twitter to be able to like weird racist posts without seeing it like yep yeah there's there's a deep dark will you be able there go into the likes and look at the likes still no other people can't see them at all right yeah you yourself will be able to see who liked your posts okay um you can see the like counts for posts like public like counts but you will not see who likes someone else's post and you will not see others you will not see what other people like I cannot wait for one of those creators of edgy content to get fed up with their edgy followers and just put them all on the saddest little black book in the world yeah the saddest little blackbook it'll be so good uh it's I mean it's truly deeply wonderfully hilarious uh platform and decline just doing the weirdest stuff you can have I just really like the idea of ultimately doing good healthy things by removing engagement metrics in the service of making your platform easier to be sketchy on like I think that's great Twitter is going to end up X is going to end up I think as a porn platform like I think they will find a way to subsume only fans because it's the last thing left for them to do it's video first now supposedly oh yeah L she appeared she had not appeared anyway anywhere since the code conference from what I understand um which went great for her can you repeat the question uh and she appeared and said X is now a video first platform for creators and everyone went what you don't make any videos Elon Musk never makes a video on his video first but if you want to make horny videos you can and secretly like them yep Ted Cruz is just going to be a static all right I'm just saying and we are in a new era of the internet right I don't know what's gonna happen to the web but I know this is the UL Power Sound era and I'm convinced this is the horny burner Android phone era for when you're urged to like something is irresistible but you don't want anyone to pixel 6A like I just got to hit that heart yeah you want them to know but you don't don't want anyone else to know that's actually a great like opposite of what happens on iPhone stays on iPhone messaging for Google when you want them to know but no one else to know that Google picks Android you're just doing Google's job today I'm trying man I'm trying to help everybody all right it's someone give us some money somehow lightning rounds available for horny pixel sponsorship all right that's it we're way over time I appreciate you all we want your feedback I'm I'm very sincere about this I know people have a lot of feelings we are here to earn your trust in whatever way that this previous segment earned your trust uh send us a note you can reach out to us you can call David at some phone number 866 Verge one1 call the hotline see it call us we'll we'll answer your questions again we we're not trying to hide the ball here at all but we are trying to go home to our families so that's it that's our Chast rock and roll and that's it for the Verge cast this week hey we love to hear from you give us a call at 866 Verge one1 the vergecast is a production of The Verge and VOX media podcast Network our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James that's it we'll see you next week all right Alex just made a huge discovery on the ul7 or whatever this thing is called tell us what the ports are um okay we got we got a light button we got we got a battery button with a minus sign for battery care okay key control TR I don't I don't know music that's for karaoke okay Echo guitar we got a guitar input right this thing rules I don't know I there's a lot going on down there these are all fully karaoke controls and then you can play a guitar through I sure I don't know what battery minus care does I really want to know but probably not today on The Verge cast two three four five boy can I there we go there it goes it's got some Numa Numa energy right yeah it always starts in the middle which I really like I love you this thing fills me with pure joy you're so happy like every other tech company is like we got to do some AI stuff that the robots are going to bang you like let's just threaten everyone and Son's like here's what's going to happen the bass speakers on the side really yeah Sony is like we're put rgbs in the bass speakers also it's called UL Power Sound now and that's our business it's goodhello and welcome to vast the flagship podcast of massive base ultimate Vibe oh no we're immediately starting there hi I'm your friend Nei Alex crans is here I'm your friend who just discovered Arc the browser yeah nobody told me about it David definitely has it repeatedly every issue of installer is like have you used this browser turns out he's right who knew David Pierce is also here although is he I just you say ultimate B and I just want to leave I just immediately know where we're going oh we're driving that car there so fast all right here's what I want to tell you it's a huge week of news uh a bunch of docks about how Google search works leaked and then they were confirmed to be real I don't want to oversell this is on the order of how the Facebook algorithm works like this is true insight into the Google search algorithm so you got to talk with that and the Fallout across the web from that uh uh Google search continues to be bananas there's a bunch of open AI news I know people want us to talk about Fox media's deal with open AI which I will to whatever extent that is interesting then we got a lightning round unsponsored for now Sam um but there's one piece of news that I think dominates the week yeah you definitely think it dominates the week and that is The Verge has received a review unit of the Sony field 7 UL speaker it's enormous it's this is the mediumsized one if you're not watching this on YouTube just imagine Nei pulled a grenade launcher out from underneath I love it so much uh it's $3.99 and as as many of you know I think the internet has eras and I think technology has eras we've talked a lot about the end of the Google search era on the internet what that might mean perhaps wor at the dawn of the AI era certainly we were in the mobile era for quite a long time the social ERA this is the UL era and what I mean by that is if the 80s were dominated by megabase and the 990s were dominated by megabase I would say that the 20s the the 2000s 210s kind of a stumble through Sony's extra base era yeah it wasn't pleasant no you know it didn't hit we're now in what Sony has called the UL era o I like that's what the buttons that's what the button says on it right here UL there's a UL button wait that Chang and uh I'm just going to turn this guy on here it's so big uh there we go it's I in fact can't see Nei through the speaker I'm told that if I hold this play button down for 5 seconds we get royaltyfree demo music you hear that YouTube royaltyfree and you guys can't see the the the lights but they're there there she goes now I don't know if you can see the amount of the speaker that is currently lit up but it's it's both drivers and then on the front the UL button is Rainbow blinking and when you push that you get massive base ultimate Vibe this is the most important product in technology do you think if you press the UL button right now the podcast would explode let's find out I got to wait for the drop to come back is this English it's sish oh there's another song oh yeah oh got so much quieter when I push the UL button is it just it just makes little drum hits when you push the can you hear that it's like a tiany I don't know man like I'm trying to sell this and it's not going great the handles are great we're turning into QVC or Tik Tok this is on our Tik Tok store right now for $400 it won't burn down your house that we know of yeah uh anyway look all I'm saying is we went from the mega base era to the extra base era which again I think was a failure I don't I mean the UL era is is not bumping so far well I mean the first song is good extra is not more than Mega and so what happened is in the mega era everybody went deaf and so couldn't hear the extra era so but now we have ultimate which all the deaf people in their 40s can hear now so it's back it look it has powerful sound with an X balance speaker unit and uh 30 hours of battery life it doesn't make the windows rattle though is it really I just think it's funny when you try to make a spec sheet for a product that is insane and you're just RGB lights next to a bullet point look it's the UL era I've never been more excited about a product in my entire life that's the vergecast everybody people have been wondering about when we're going to give a 10 out of 10 and I think it might be happening it might be time by the way this is the mediumsized one this is the seven there's also a 10 I cannot wait for that one to arrive uh they also sent us two sevens Chris Welch just has one in his house taking it most of his home I'd like to formally apologize to everyone for bringing the UL fi field s on the show um and by apologizing me and I'm sorry if you felt bad I felt great all right let's talk about the news that's what I've learned about apologies soon I'll be taking a screenshot of notes app I'm really excited I'm headed directly for that in your in everyone's career you you're like is this the screenshot of notes app yeah let's find out okay let's talk about the news there's a lot of news a lot of it is about Ai and what it is doing to the internet if you've been listening to our show or reading The Verge or listening to coder whatever you know that we've had a thesis for a while now stretching back into the middle of last year that the internet was about to get flipped over not just by AI but by search in general by social platforms falling apart I don't know if you're aware they changed the name from Twitter to X like something's happening yeah and one thing that we really wanted to do was pay a lot of attention to what things were like now so we could properly describe how they changed which meant we did a lot of SEO coverage last year covered the culture of SEO the community of SEO why the web looks like an SEO disaster how Google fights back against SEO uh Mia did a lot of that reporting for us I think I've radicalized her like you make someone care about SEO for eight months they come out a different person on the other side but Mia is done a great job of that reporting we had a great feature from Amanda Chicago Lewis the SE Community is still mad about it featured an alligator party we we'll link all this stuff you can read it the the point I'm trying to make is we felt like it was changing I think that hunch was correct right yeah yeah I mean Google kind of sucks now I'm using cogy so Google sucks now uh right there's other search products Google's rolling out Ai overviews and then over the long weekend a bunch of SEO people discovered that the API documentation for Google search had been inadvertently made public on GitHub for quite some time and there were a couple blog posts one that was just like here's how I found it here's who showed it to me uh that one's really interesting and then there's another one that's more of a deep dive into here's what it says and then there was a little bit of back and forth about is this real like can we trust what we're seeing because some of what the documentation revealed is that Google has not been telling the whole truth about how search works for a very very long time and so some of the headlines in these posts are like is Google lying to us and some of the copy in these posts is like Google has been lying to us Google was initially just totally dead silent which is weird like usually we at least get a no comment but Mia sent a bunch of emails we sent some texts hey is there anything do you want to deny that this is real dead silence then yesterday Wednesday Google confirmed the leaks they said this is real and they said and they said we would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about search based on out of contact cator and complete information basically they're saying yeah this is real but it's not super real it's a lot David you have been covering search and how it works and thinking about it you use the most browsers and search engines of anyone I know there's some real explosive information here but it's still not clear how much we should take seriously and how much Google is lying it's just a lot of angry people are suddenly like oh this is what I've been angry about yeah it's a weird moment because Google search has always been a blackbox um Google has very deliberately not revealed how Google search works and what it cares about in part because it's so complicated that it's actually a hard borderline impossible thing to sit down and explain to somebody why something is where it is in search results like I don't think any individual person at Google knows the answer to that question it's just not how the system works anymore um but also because the more Google reveals about how search works the more tools it is giving people with which to game Google search which has been the cat and mouse game they've been playing forever and so what has been happening is people have been asking Google what is going on what systems and rankings does Google care about what can I do to make my stuff rank higher in Google search and Google has given a lot of answers that these 2500 pages of internal API documents say r essentially not true like there are a series of things that Google has in these documents that it has explicitly said out loud it does not consider in search ranking are those two statements completely mutually exclusive no which is why this gets so weird right like there are I forget the exact number but it was right around 14,000 individual things referenced in these Pages which is basically like 14,000 different signals uh how those are ranked which matter more which matter less whether they're all even counted how old this information is what some of the terms actually mean very hard to know because a lot of them are terms we've never seen before that Google has been saying for years didn't exist but what what seems to be true is you don't have a a heading in your API for a thing that you don't care about and so for things that Google has for years said that it doesn't care about there is now evidence that it is at least a piece of data that Google collects and one of Wild Things is that people who do SEO spend a lot of time testing theories and they've been testing theories and people like the the guy who broke the story ran fishkin have gotten crap from people in the community for running tests and saying things like oh it seems like Google search really cares about click-through rates and people at Google saying no no no no we don't care about click-through rates you're an idiot and this overwhelmingly makes it look like Google cares an awful lot about click-through rates and so now we're in this place where I think a big part of what we've been seeing from the SEO Community is people who were like oh not only has Google not been telling us the truth they've been lying to our faces and making like gaslighting us into believing the wrong thing about how Google search works and it's a weird like existential crisis when that happens and the thing I'll just like try to chain together is we started paying attention to this story last year because we wanted to know what this ecosystem was like right like we wanted a picture of maybe like the last days of disco right like here's what it was like before the comet hits and I thought the comet would be AI or the end of social networks or Google keeping more traffic inside a featured whatever the comet is and it kind of feels like the comet is actually just knowing that Google wasn't telling the whole truth right like the headings in these blog posts like legitimately there's a a trade publication called search engine land that we've been watching a lot of the coverage of this on that site it's one of the bigger SEO trade Publications to exist and the headings are like how does SEO move on from here one of the subheadings in the piece where they run the Google statement was did Google lie to us that's just a subhead that's just a straight H2 on their story which by the way people do uh in order to be ranked higher in Google you put questions people might Google in an H2 I'm serious right and that is like push this all the way down and it's like what's inside this document is how the internet works right like people have built the internet to try to figure out how to game the stuff that is inside these 2500 pages and like you you can reverse ER the internet out of Google's API which I think is why this feels so huge like your your point about the Facebook algorithm that you've been saying all week like this is the on the order of leaking the Facebook algorithm like it is and in the way that understanding the Facebook algorithm would essentially help us understand a decade of our online relationships like this is the internet in 2500 pages of like weird inscrutable API calls and I think that's hard for people who aren't in the SEO business or our business which is kind of the SEO business to fully wrap their we make if you make a website you care about this a little bit yeah yeah yeah we have to right like it's required I I I edit buying guides I have to care a lot about SEO and people who don't care about SEO they like I go and I tell my friends I'm like this huge document like cash of documents Dro this is huge and they're like why are you what is SEO Elon mus says I'm gonna open source the Twitter algorithm and this is Front Page News the API calls or Fields basically of what data Google collects to run the ranking algorithm leaks and it's like us like freaking out yeah and it's kind of nowhere and I I like to David's point we don't know how these things are ranked that's true but we do know that Google has said for years it does not collect some of this data or care about some of this data and it definitely does what are you gonna do with that uh Rand fishkin the same person you mentioned David has got spent a long time saying it seems like this thing called dwell time is important so you click through a Google result you land on a website you're there for however long you come back to Google you go to the next one that time you spend on the website he's like that seems important and Google has basically said no Yep they're tracking that too yeah the one that I think is the most explosive which we don't really know how to understand is Click data from chrome and it's there somewhere right so one thing we know that Google does which is a little shaky is when you search for a website I think the example that came out in one of the antitrust trials was Vogue or cosmopolit it was some magazine like this yeah it was one of those yeah and you get the website and then right below it in the search result you get their headings like Beauty fashion style coverage M Gala those headings are generated by what people click on in those websites in Chrome yeah and Google has forever said it does not use data from chrome to it in pack search and then you look at these API talks you're like oh it's in there there's data from chrome like it's potential that Google is actually using that for search and they have sworn up and down to every regulator to every SEO professional to everyone that these things are not the same what are you going to do with that it's such a funny example too because like of course Google does that like this to me so much of this leak is things that you would obviously assume Google is doing except that Google has been denying doing it for years that it turns out in fact Google is doing like I'm in the business of knowing which links are good and I also run a browser in which B ions of people click links every day like at some point you'd be insane not to let one affect the other you have maybe the best possible data stream which is the links that people go to and how long they spend there which is literally that is all you could ever want to know in search rankings and so the idea that they are spread apart and not you know in any way correlated out of the goodness of Google's heart I think has always been sort of silly to people and so to some extent it's like it it just confirms what your instincts tell you in a lot of this league yeah I keep going back to Nei earlier you said this was kind of like a comet hitting and I feel like it's definitely a comment for the SEO Community but for the rest of us we've kind of been in more like high waters Rising as apocalypse it's go right like the Google the Google experience for 90% of people has just been like okay the sea levels are rising now and and it feels like this was maybe that big push in the water oh now it's covering Manhattan dang it yeah yeah I mean it it it does feel like the dam is breaking one of the things that we were talking about when we did our decoder episode recently about Google Zero was this stuff leaks because people are mad yeah and so if you were an SEO operator and you uncovered a bunch of secret data that Google was collecting you would not tell the SEO Community right like you would you would definitely keep that to yourself but instead what's happening is people are mad and they're like look at these lies or look at what we perceive to be lies yeah and there's just a lot of the the ideas that people have had about how Google search works one of them is domain Authority so a very funny thing that happens is every year I publish best printer 2024 by a Brother laser printer and it goes to the top of the rankings it goes to the top of the search rankings one uh because I have the right answer which is us should by Brother laser printer and never think about it two because I'm the best person to write about printers uh in world history no one else has written a better printer post than me I'm sorry that's just the truth certainly these two can try and I don't mean that because there's not better writers than me I mean those writers are not wasting their time about you are the perfect the perfect middle of good at your job and also interested in printer posts that has ever existed like the whole staff is better at this than me I just they won't diag yeah that's fine um and it and then everyone tweets it and shares it and people write about it because it's a joke and it's funny and it's at the top of the list and then the SEO Community says things like the virge is just taking advantage of their domain Authority which yeah yeah true that's what we're doing and then Google's like we don't have domain Authority that's not a thing we keep track of and then you look at the thing and they track something called site Authority and it's that Dynamic Authority yeah right it's just that Dynamic which is like okay like we understand that you don't want people to game search we have been very critical of SEO forms that game search again decoder this week is just about people gaming search and putting small businesses out of business but if you're not honest right then and If you deny the things are happening then the backlash is really strong the example I keep thinking about is what if every Instagram influencer woke up today and was like Instagram has been lying to us for a decade like how' that go for that platform Adam misseri just like immediately like hey guys he's not making it better I'm here with a video on why the lies were worth it yeah exactly now I got to go to the Met Galla yeah exact I mean kind of he's like my glasses are getting more expensive every day and they look fabulous they're very good um what would happen if every YouTuber I always joke that every YouTuber gets their wings when they make the video about how they're mad at YouTube would what would happen if every YouTuber was like they've been lyed to us for a decade that's that's where Google is landing with web with these links we're going to have a lot more coverage of them now that we know they're real we're going to pull them apart we're going to talk to some experts I have people from other companies in my inbox saying things like if some of this is real then Chrome is essentially spyware yeah I mean it sounds like last week we were having this whole conversation about co-pilot and how everybody was very upset because they felt like co-pilot plus PCS all the stuff that's Microsoft is doing was horrible and it was it was essentially key loggers and it's like okay well now we basically have confirmation that Chrome is a key logger well we right right we there's like a field yeah it's like if you were to make a spreadsheet and one of the things in spreadsheet would be like my friend's bank account numbers and you're like but I never filled it in yeah I just kind of wanted in case someone told me their bank account number sure I do that all the time yeah people my friends have gone out with on dates like I will I just keep Maybe maybe that's a page I want to have in my notebook right again I I I would encourage anyone who is alarmed by this to go to your Chrome history think about all the cookies that you have I mean like of course it's a key like what the hell is a browser if not a key loger uh that's literally its job is to know all the links that you've been to and all the things that you typed inside of them and I think to some extent again I just keep coming back to this idea that like Google is going to say okay we we run a search engine wouldn't it be cool if knew all the links people would go to when they weren't on Google and then somebody on Chrome is like what if we just built an awesome browser and they just it would be the most like have you met Google thing in history and to be fair if any company could accidentally keep those two things apart it is Google but like just strategically it it would be absurd for Google to do this and not actually connect those dots together right again and I think from some of the antitrust trials David you covered some of them Google's been pretty open like our engineers wanted a bunch of Click data to make the search engine better and that's SE billion right okay well a bunch of people run Windows we don't have to pay Microsoft we just have to make a browser and put it on there and now we run the biggest browser in the world and we get all the clicks like that is exactly what you would do yeah I think I think the thing is the what's different here is that everybody should understand this right like I understand that Google is reading my my emails because I signed up for Gmail in like 2004 2005 that was part of the deal you know it reads my emails to deliver me ads so I understand that most people don't and a lot of times they have these moments when stuff like this happens where they're like oh they have so much more information about me than I ever thought they did and it's just this moment for a lot of people where it's just like oh I didn't I never intellectualized this I never like fully comprehended how much these companies have about me yeah and then on on the flip side you have people who are trying to build businesses saying hey it looks like you doing this and Google saying no yeah and just flat out lying to them in a way that's like you know I don't think they Google has any interest in rebuilding trust with the SEO people right actually one of the funniest things about this is that is such an antagonistic relationship I often make the comparison to platforms like I think the web is essentially Google's platform and certainly a lot of these businesses are building their businesses on the platform known as Google search not the web right right they're they're they're search dependent businesses and Google does not have like warm and fuzzy platform Creator relationships with these folks like Adam misseri is like I'm going to sit down with the creators like look at all these great creators he's got a great sweater on right Neil Mohan who runs YouTube loves loves a Creator breakfast yeah right like every platform that depends on creators has that relationship that extracts more value than it pays them that's life and platform World they they try to mify the creators all the time Google does not try to mify website owners no because I mean at this point the the internet is reliant on Google and what Google says is hey run our ads on your site and you can have some money does that seem good but what I think is so interesting about this is like the the YouTube the sort of social platform example is really interesting because what those companies by and large have done is be inscrutable on purpose right like you you look at Adam AER responding to people who are like why didn't my post do numbers why is this one working and this one not working and they never really answer the question except to say you know do good work and and keep posting and whatever and so what you see is like the people who are successful on these platforms are the ones who are constantly running experiments in public like you remember Mr BEAST's whole thing where he was like if I have my mouth open in the thumbnail it gets more clicks like YouTube didn't tell him that these are the experiments he's running in public what Google has done that is so wild is it's it's as if Neil Mohan called Mr Beast and said shut your mouth it doesn't help and it said so it's like okay it's one to not be told the rules of the game and figure them out for yourself I actually think that relationship is like odd but fine right and it's like here here is a a black box it's your job to figure it out that is sort of the internet we live on but for Google to have spent this long denying the existence of what people are finding on their own and sort of making people question what they're finding with their own two hands in front of their own two eyes is just wild and again we should say there is a lot about how all of this works that we still don't know I think a lot of it is going to start to come out very fast because there are a lot of people who do these experiments who are now armed with a tremendous amount of new data and so I think we're going to learn a lot about how Google works really really quickly now uh but it's just it just feels so weird to hear the people who do this for a living be like yeah I've been asking these questions and being publicly lied to about how my job works for a decade that just feels crazy also we should not there are pending antitrust lawsuits against Google and lots and lots of regulators around the world who uh have been asking the same questions and getting the same kind of answers well which is another place a lot of this information is coming from by the way like the there was this thing called nav boost that came up a bunch in the in the API which talks a lot about how click-through rate and the stuff you're talking about like the the long and short clicks whether you come back very quickly from a search result or stay on the page a while uh all of that is part of a system Google has called nav boost that came up in the antitrust trial and made some noise where it's like okay this is actually overriding a lot of our other rankings is what you do once you interact with a search result and that is very different from what Google has told people yeah actually my favorite part of all this my favorite thing because it's such a good name let's be honest how do you get me you give something an adorable name um Google has spent years positioning search as a utility right not as a business that they run but as the water or electricity of the Internet it's just a neutral utility you just you just use it and we don't have any ideas about it it just we set the robots to crawl the internet and they they're just a baby yeah they just find the stuff and they show it to you and when you try to cover search as anything other than a utility the attitude from Google is like why would you do that right we want to teach people how search works and like no there's like a culture of search like the same way that there's a culture of Tik Tok right and that's been a disconnect but they have done that on purpose right because if you treat something like a utility or a neutral algorithm or just the right answer that the Google Brilliance of page rank has discovered across the web then maybe you don't poke at it too much and inside these documents we find things like nav boost as part of a system that is called twiddlers yeah twiddlers in the way to think about it is like the big Google algorithm is like the back end and right before it displays you a result the twiddlers show up and they twiddle the result we just twiddle their little and so nav boost is a Twi it's like categorized as a twiddler it's like we went and found some other stuff and we're just we're Shuffle that around a little bit and there's a bunch of those and like lots of Google systems are built as twiddlers so they have plausible deniability that the core search ranking algorithm doesn't take these factors in but right before they show them to you just a little twiddle twiddlers baby and it's like H I'm not that stupid you know it's like it's one system that displays a search result at the end where it happens like I don't think they can run around being like we were always telling the truth yeah it's just these These twiddlers are out of control right they they have no control over it they're just a baby I that's it's my favorite thing that everybody does now when they screw up they just go I'm just a baby I don't know it's my first day running search who can say yourselves anyhow we are going to learn a lot more about this I we often try not to oversell things I'm just telling you the the web the people who make the web are a flame because of these documents because they do make Google seem if not outright a liar as though they have been socially engineering a community of people who make things into not believing what they see as David is saying and I think the backlash there is going to be ferocious yeah especially as search traffic declines especially as user Behavior changes around AI especially as the AI results continue to tell people to eat glue like it's not there's not a lot of trust left in this ecosystem and it's it's to me it's weird that there's not more coverage of it it's not as sexy as the Facebook algorithm or Elon saying is an open source the Twitter algorithm but like d said this is the architecture of the internet yeah I think it is that's why it's so hard for people it it is so ingrained in how most people function that it's shocking to them to a where point where it's like I I can't even process this have to go yeah like most people I don't think fully grasp how much the goog the Google most people don't fully grasp how much Google affects their online experience they just don't they know it they see it and everything but it's just like just gloss over it and now it's like oh we're having to actually reckon with this and think about this yeah it's why I always like to talk about cooking websites uh because if you want the if you want the single cleanest example of how Google changes the way a web page works go read a recipe site uh you you will see everything you need to see you will see the H2S which Google wants because there are going to be questions that people might be Googling you're going to see the jump to recipe thing but then you're also going to see 2,000 words of nonsense about their lives because you have to actually stay on the page a long time in order for Google to believe that that's a successful search they want images that's very important to Google like you every single Pixel of that page right down to how the recipe is structured is made for Google and anyone who runs a food blog will tell you that the fundamental tension is like I did this because I like food and I actually work for Google and that feels crappy to a lot of people and now Google's going to take that stuff and show the recipes people in AI right but I do think what one more thought on this that I've I've been seeing a lot of increasingly in the SEO world and I think is a really interesting like internet question is uh one way to read a lot of what we've seen in these leaks is that SEO is dead uh and no longer will work like there let me I I copied this one paragraph out from the thing that Rand wrote um he said Google no longer rewards Scrappy clever SEO Savvy operators who know all the right tricks they reward established Brands search measurable forms of popularity and establish domains that Searchers already know and click from 1998 to 2018 or so one could reasonably start a powerful marketing flywheel with SEO for Google in 2024 I don't think that's realistic at least not on the English language web in competitive sectors like there is a there is a real defeatism to the idea that Google cares a lot about the sites that already exist the places people already go what has been going on for a long time and the idea that you can come and be new and good and smart and people will find you because that's how Google works is a dying Theory yeah I asked this question to a lot of just media people website CEOs and decoder I ask this question of Sundar why would anyone make a website you're a new Creator we're we're all gonna quit our jobs at AOL which you should do uh can't recommend it enough best decision I've ever made I I don't plan on doing it you should go get a job at a just a quit just quit um uh but that's you know that's how we find out the Verge we all work to Gadget 2010 2011 we had this idea for The Verge we all quit we're going to start a new thing we started a website like a big desktop website we didn't even have a mobile site we started a big hairy desktop website with like forums and features and all this stuff and then the mobile web came and We Shrunk down the thing and whatever but it was never a question that we would start anything but a website there were 12 of us we had a big idea we wanted to do a thing what we were gonna do will start a website I think if you get to that place in 2024 maybe some people are going to start a substack I don't think they think of those things as websites those are newsletters or independent newsletter on ghost or whatever mostly what they're going to do is start YouTube channels and Tik Tok channels yeah the the only people I see who are kind of doing that sort of thing like right leaving their jobs whatever and being like I'm going to start a website are already established Brands right like the folks who are over at Kaku 404 who were from Vice these folks just said I'm going to go and I'm going to start a new thing and I they all take that model from dead spin that became Defector yeah and and that works but that is you have to have an audience yeah that worked because they have that audience right like most people don't have that audience and don't have that scale and I think Casey's written about that a lot of like he has to work to get platformer out he has to like really put in the effort because scale is hard and it's much much harder now because of Google yeah and I those sites are all great I don't think they uh like four4 is on ghost yeah right so they're taking advantage some infrastructure for newsletter that exists that lets them be a different kind of thing but the idea that like we coded our website from scratch you wouldn't do that we're gon like build a product that is a website um I didn't do it do that in24 we it was just not a good investment in 2024 for the reason David is saying yeah um and there's you know many things have changed in the past 13 years but the idea that the new creators on the internet will not go to the open web but instead we'll go to a closed video platform I think is very dangerous and I don't know the right answer to get people back to making open searchable web properties if the biggest search engine is like screw it like Hurst we'll just everyone can go read- Meredith like whatever you know like maybe that's the right outcome and maybe that's just the closing of the web but I again the reason we started covering it last year is because I was like oh the comment's coming and the more we covered it like oh the comment's coming like we should capture this moment and it feels like again I thought the comment would be AI I thought that I did not expect it to be like everyone is this mad it just feels like we we'll see how it goes we're going to cover a lot more it I think the other browser makers Regulators there's just a flood of negative emotion about how Google has behaved that it might just it feels like it's coming to a head I I do have one question for you guys especially you David because you use a lot of different search engines are any of them good like do any of them when you go and you search something actually give you those unique results that used to be like oh yeah now I know what I'm doing on this this search engine um yes and no uh kogi which is the one you mentioned which is also what I use it's 10 bucks a month it's excellent I cannot recommend it enough paying for a search engine feels ridiculous but it's worth it uh has a thing that it calls small web where it actually deliberately built a like crowdsource database of sites that aren't The Verge and aren't like big mainstream news sites the kind that dominate search results but are like people's blogs and little alternative news sites and local newspapers and all that kinds of cool stuff and you can you can toggle the search just to that and I think the the sort of big omnius search is never coming back from what it is now it's you you it's just interface changes really like I think kagi stuff is better than Google but mostly just because it's nicer thing to use than Google is at this moment especially in Arc yeah but where we are now is like the the only solution is going to be to artificially decide which part of the web you want to look at because all of the signals for the rest of the web are are starting to break away from that like find and explore new things Vibe because that's harder to do and harder to measure than oh people generally believe that Nei is right about which printer to buy and that's actually like a pretty easy thing for a search engine to believe and send you to over and over again yeah and we will continue ruthlessly using our domain Authority we will I love to break big printer David I can't remember who was you who said this Casey might have said it to me in passing we used to think of surfing the web as a fun thing to do and all of Google's messaging at IO was let Google do the Googling for you yeah which makes it seem like work MH it's like no this is how I wasted time do you know how much I didn't pay attention in law school because I was just browsing the we class like that's a it's weird that we've made the web this unpleasant and the platforms figured it out and hopefully we can get some of that back I don't know if we can we're going to keep running a website we're not we do have a Tik Tok for as long as Tik Tok B but all right we're going to keep using our domain authority to crush big printer hell yes just ruthless ruthless domain Authority abuse uh but that's our mission here at the merch we got to take a break we'll be back all right we're back the the post credit scene on this episode of the brast on YouTube is g to be great it is that's all I can say that's all I'm allowed to say it's lightning round one according to our rundown the AI lightning round so there's a bunch of wwc rumors about what's going to happen with open AI uh they've apparently Inked their deal Google had a bad week last week we should talk about that more Google um gpts are open now with open AI store there's a lot but I know people want us to talk about our press release Fox media's press release uh which is that like many media companies VOX media signed a content in technology deal with open AI the Atlantic had one on the same day it was like Fox Med Atlantic were in the headlines together I know David what you run you interview me yeah so okay I think the the big question to to me is both uh how do we feel as people who work at a company with a deal like this and what is this what does all this mean about the media in general so I think like we we just had a conversation earlier with a bunch of the folks in our Newsroom talking about this stuff and and I think I want to know for you as somebody who runs a newsroom you didn't make this deal uh you I assume will at some point see the contract because you like in about contracts I don't think thing you do from I sincerely doubt that is true I'll do my best it is more likely that I will see someone else's contract before I see our own companies oh that's interesting that's a that's a fun reporting tactic can I can I bully my boss before I can bully somebody else like there our company's very good at being like no you can't just report on our own company other companies like here's the stuff like yeah it that's just the way of being a reporter yeah that that's fair but so I I am curious for you as like a a newsroom leader how you even think through what a deal like this means sure uh we do a lot of disclosures on this show famously I think uh I've had journalism professors talk to me about the fact that our disclosures are running joke with the audience like we want to be really transparent about where information comes from reasons to not trust us if you don't want to trust us like my goal is always to just empower the audience with information that's the top level so like if you're listening to this and you've listened to the show that's why we do disclosures that's why they're a joke like I want the only currency we have as a news organization is trust so we're trying to that's why we have the background policy right all the spokes people have to use their names when they talk to us because we don't want to pretend we know something that they just told us right if Google or apple or Microsoft or whoever wants to talk to us and get some information on our Pages they need to be accountable for it not us and that's just trust that's just who are you going to trust where does a trust go who do you have to trust for to believe the story so that's the top level right next to that which I think the audience doesn't see as much because why would you is our Newsroom has to not think about it like that's actually what Independence is right is not I know that our company has a deal or an investor and I'm just going to like I'm going to think about it as I write the story the goal is they don't think about it at all right and we just go do the reporting and we publish what is true or what we believe or what we think people should know right and that that the in any traditional Newsroom that's the what is called the firewall right so we do stuff our sales team there's advertising over we just came back from an ad break right like and that but we don't know what the ads are I don't know what ads just played I get so many emails about the crypto ads I don't know man yeah like I think crypto's stupid like what do you want me to do like that's that team and if we open the door and start telling that team what to do the danger and this is a danger that is proven out over and over again in newsrooms around the world if we open the door and start telling them what to do they're like hey that door's open right we're going to start telling you what to do so we just keep the door closed this is why you have the firewall it works in both directions so for me and I understand open ey in particular is pretty shady company I feel like our entire episode last week was like this company is pretty shady we're talk about um like whatever um fine but like that's the commercial side of our company and I understand like I've talked to a lot of media Executives like I'm running around covering Google Zero I've been talking to a lot of media people lately and I can talk about that bigger question David of like are these good deals are these like a good idea broadly because I think I've done some reporting I have some thoughts about that but the thing that like when our press release went out like no we're not going to change our recover open a yes I think when it's appropriate we'll disclose it it's not like a like Comcast is an investor in our company right like we disclose it every time we whisper about Comcast because they're an investor this is a licensing deal like we have a lot of those across our company I don't want to just get into a situation where I'm like disclosure Yahoo licenses an RSS feed of the dodo like what do you want like I think that door can get too open we can overread it so would go a little long it would go a little long um and I want to preserve our independence and what Independence really means to me is yes we'll disclose it yes we'll earn everyone's trust but I would prefer it if we were just covering open AI without thinking about it and so that's that's the balance I'm trying to strike I'm open to people's thoughts about how much you need from us to continue having that trust um but it is in many ways like more of a normal deal than people are expecting right like when when we did a Netflix show I think there was less outcry but like I was the producer of a disclosure I made a Netflix show every time you should watch you should watch a Netflix show uh David and I are gonna make one just so that we that was like way Messier right like I'm going to meetings at Netflix about our show I wasn't allowed to talk about until our show was made um so I want to make sure we like find the right balance and I understand there's just a lot of feelings about Ai and open AI in particular but like at the end of the day the goal for all of these media companies is to just get some control back out of a situation that felt out of control what situation is that well they took everything anyway right right that's the situation and we can talk about that broadly I just want to separate the two things like our Newsroom is independent open AI did not buy any control of our Newsroom we will be very honest with everybody when we think the disclosure could affect how you perceive one of our stories and I think that you know around copyright LW like that makes sense to me we're going to write a story about the New York Times lwuit against open that is a great place for disclosure opena launches a new GPT feature like I don't know you tell me maybe we need to do that every time but like I I I don't want to overread it as though to make it seem like we're doing something we're not um so that's it that's like my Top Line like we will have a disclosure I love a disclosure disclosure Comcast is an investor in box media uh I'm in a Netflix show disclosure Alex CR is the last remaining Paramount plus subscriber it's true hi um look I this is our brand and we're going to do them I just the thing that I am trying to be careful about is separating how people feel about these deals broadly and what it means for our Newsroom right what it means for our Newsroom is the status quo like it is not changing we are GNA operate without fear or favor and again my goal is to earn everyone's trust by being as transparent as can be and I just want to make sure that we're not so transparent that we actually go in a full circle and No One Believes us so like you tell me where you think the line is I'm open to the feedback I I asked for it from our staff today I'm asking for it from the audience today um but the the main thing is not changing which is I want I I would prefer it if our reporters were not worried about an opening ideal or thinking about it and we just covered the company like we have been for a long time yeah and this is a thing we should say like a thing I've learned about the media business over the years is that it's very unusual in the sense that like that tension you're describing between the work that we do and where the money comes from is like good and healthy and should always exist and the our editorial and sales team should always like hate each other a little bit it's like a useful thing uh but also like we have tech company ads all over our website like that is that is a it's it's a not dissimilar thing and it is it is just something you have to navigate and get comfortable with and like people always like sending us the stuff where I we we'll make a about how terrible Facebook is right before a Facebook ad like it's my favorite thing it's so fun uh but I do want to talk about the broader piece of this because I think the I think you're right that the reaction I saw out there was less like you know I say one more thing we're not going to start publishing a bunch of AI content who hello no I think people see partnership and they're like for printer post yeah yeah I'm the only person who's put AI content on those website both posts were about printers you I wish you people would get madder at me about it and make that post go even more viral no one will do it we will only use AI to ruin our domain Authority in Google search uh it I'm sure we're going to end up building some like there's one thing that all of us want which is we would like better alt text on our images to make them more accessible to make the site more accessible we would like our site to be better for screen readers right now that's a lot of very manual work if we can use some of these tools to make that better make our site more accessible that's a great outcome come right I don't know if that's going to work right now our creative team tells me like this all text is not good enough um and AI everybody it's just not good enough yet but if we can start to build that stuff that's great so I there's that part of it which I think is interesting I don't know what that looks like I haven't talked to our product team about any of that stuff yet um but the other part where the Verge is just the Verge that's going to remain exactly the same today as it was yesterday yeah okay let's talk about the Brer side of this because I think there are there are two pieces of the should media companies be making deals like this with open AI question that I find very interesting we should talk about both of them the first is um haven't you idiots learned your lesson from making these deals with companies like Facebook and Google and everybody else who promised you money to save journalism and in fact forced you to do a bunch of stuff pulled out the rug and kind of screwed up the industry the second is um aren't you guys don't you realize that AI is out to put all of you out of jobs and just take your information use it in training data and then get rid of you why are you ushering in the journalism apocalypse and I think to some extent those are like two versions of the same question but I think are like the big picture things going on here like are we contributing to our own downfall or are we chasing money at the expense of doing anything that is smart or long-term thinking I mean the media industry never does anything yeah this the media industry is not known for for really good businesses a vanity project the thing we have talked a lot about on this show is that we the media industry as a whole probably should have spent more time over the last decade building Facebook competitors than making Facebook videos and I think like my hope is we have learned that lesson and that the next minute of the journalism industry will be learning that lesson and executing on it which is I think part of why we're so excited about the ferse because it's a thing that opens up possibilities for new kinds of media products uh is there a fear that open Ai and the like AI search engine stuff that is inevitably coming is just the next pivot to video and everybody falls for it and gives up on building new things for five more years yes okay so here's I just I'm gonna bracket our company because they did not talk to me this which is like that's the firewall yeah but uh Nick Thompson who is the co of the Atlantic has published a bunch about why the Atlantic did the deal he made a video about it you can go watch on LinkedIn um Nick used to be the editor-in chief of wire DAV used to work for Nick I did ni uh Nick knows he knows yeah he gets it I Nick and our friends he he knows he he understands what he's doing um Axel Springer has signed one of these deals the financial times has signed one of these deals a lot of these companies are signing these deals my understanding of the deals from the reporting not from the digging around our company but from the reporting is twofold one we just spent a whole bunch of time talking about Google uh Google is a fair use argument right we're going to come and index all of your information we're going to show it to people in return you'll get traffic and everyone said H that's a little a little squeaky but okay and then Google won a bunch of cases against different mediate organizations that did not like this idea yeah we're going to index every book in the world and show to people and the book publishers like no you're stealing our stuff and Google one that case uh Google we're going to index all the images on the internet bunch of porn Publishers said no that's we don't want you to do that and they were not the most sympathetic defendants in the world Google won that case Google said we're going to put every episode of South Park on YouTube and Viacom said no and then they started posting episodes of South Park to YouTube on their own and they lost that case that was not a great legal strategy but that's what they did but that all of Google that whole platform Dynamic was we're going to take your stuff and we're I pay you and we you'll get something you'll get you we'll pay you an exposure yeah in that uh look around so I think I think a lot of the reaction right now is well we cannot let that happen again we need some rules I think a problem for all these companies is that open Ai and Google and whoever else anthropic um perplexity you name it they've all taken it anyway yeah yeah they they have it llama scraped on the internet every Facebook video we've ever made is in llama built a tool to scrape YouTube for more data like like that's just how it's done yeah I think you know abson our own company I know nothing about the deal Beyond we don't keep say it we have one there it is there's your disclosure Fox Media has a content and Technology deal with open I think you're right where it's like it is a thing of they everybody it's already been taken it's already gone everybody it's like the cat is out of the bag right um Genie's out of the bottle whatever euphemism you want to use there it's happened and now it's okay what do we put a price on that and a lot of these companies we're we're starting to hear more about the price there we're starting to hear what it is and that might not end up being the right price right like like these deals might not be the right deals but they are Deals they are money where there wasn't money um I think a really interesting thing is how do you set the right price what is the value they've already trained on it yep what is deal for now one of the things that has come out about these deals which are all from what I understand they're all basically the same structure I think the the News Corp deal is like $250 million over five or 10 years right most of the other deals are $10 million over five to 10 years or something like that um I it's five um the main thing that has come out about them is that they govern how much can be displayed how the information is displayed how it's attributed what links are in it and you look at that and I what I see is a honestly a reaction to Google which has gone from We're linking to your stuff to we're going to cut out your stuff and put it in featured Snippets to we're going to have our AI rewrite whatever and just show you the answer and never send you a click and then you'll eat glue and there's nothing you can do about it because we're indexing your website every single day all right and there's nothing you can do about it because there's no contract right so I what I have heard and what I see is like that control and I think Nick again Nick Thompson at former of wired who knows uh has been public about this and his announcement the Atlantic that control is the thing because if you go beyond that you don't have to go invent some copyright argument you have a breach of contract claim and that's much easier to litigate the other thing that I see happening all over the industry and we made an entire decoder episode with sah Jong and I um about how all of AI rests on a totally shaky copyright fair use argument that could blow up at any moment yeah like open eye your business could blow up at any moment because you have weird ideas about copyright law no one can afford to litigate these ideas so the New York Times sued open a ey someone famously uh they spent a million dollars on that lawsuit so far public company we we just know the answer um to get nothing like they haven't they haven't achieved an outcome yet they just done they could lose and they could lose so that's a coin flip New York Times big public company they run a very successful video game service maybe the most successful online game service of all is the New York Times wle just paying the bills for this lawsuit um most media companies do not have just some cash cow cooking website or gaming service to fund a lawsuit about their journalism and so I think they're all looking looking at the Times lawsuit they're saying well this is going to take 5 years this is going to take 10 years it might go to Supreme Court they might lose hopefully the times wins if they win our contracts will expire right around then and we'll renegotiate with the strength of this copyright precedent and if they lose we'll just reup our deal yeah and I I see that playing out as most media companies cannot afford to go litigate these deals and and importantly no one can afford to sue Google yeah like Google's got infinite money um and I I know everyone's talking about open ey and I know whatever disclosure open ey has a Content technology Fox Media I would just we just spent that whole first segment about Google which is the thing it's the 800 pound gorilla everyone on the web operates in the universe of Google including open AI right open has made Google dance it's a barad quote but they're still it like Google's the big profitable ultra high margin company and open AI doesn't make a dollar as far as I understand right they're they're still losing money so you just there's a there's a difference there in how these companies are perceiving their antagonists and I think they can get open ey to come to the table and eventually what they're going to do is they're going to go to Google and they're going to say pay us your competitor is paying us our traffic is dropping and if it continues to drop we're going to let we're going to pull the plug on you indexing our website and I don't know how long that's going to take maybe it'll never happen happen because the threats are effective but you just see that's where the trend line is headed and then you'll see you'll only get the URL for buy this one printer Neel recommends I'll sell you one link Google um but that's that's like broadly how I see the the dynamic of this playing out is the copyright I care a lot about copyright law the copyright argument is so uncertain on both sides of the coin that people are trying to buy some certainty so that they have leverage to go negotiate against the real power in the ecosystem makes logical sense to me I also think it might be wildly optimistic about who is actually going to extract anything from Google I like our media Executives I think they're brilliant it it should be clear I think Nick is very smart most media Executives no I I mean like a players even the thesis is good right like I I I buy the thesis as far as it goes I just think there is not a lot of evidence that says anyone can pick a fight with Google and win because we are in this I mean like you keep harping about Google Zero like when that happens and people have nothing to lose by picking that fight with Google they might start to pick that fight with Google right now if I just say you can't crawl my website anymore overwhelmingly I go straight out of business yep yep that's what I mean that's this is what I'm saying like the trend lines right but the that trend is so slow it's so so slow it's slow and it isn't slow I think for some Publishers it's it's super slow for others it's not right if if you're seeing shakiness in your Google results and you're seeing Ai overviews and you're like maybe Google zero is real or you're a midsize publisher right which are not getting these deals right now it's all the big Publishers are getting this deal but somewhere down the road the midsize Publishers I assume will get the deal um or be offered a deal or go ask for a deal who knows at some point right the trend line of our Google traffic is going down AR investment in caring about you is no longer worth it and they're paying us money like I I I just that is it's a destabilizing factor in all these conversations where there have never been destabilizing factors for about a decade yeah and so we'll just see like um the last time this happens this is the negative argument I'll give everyone the negative argument David wrote about this he wrote about Google amp at the beginning of last year because I was like we got to start with what Google has done to the web Google did Amp because Facebook shut up and said do instant articles and put all of your articles directly into our platform and they'll load really fast on Native on the web and we'll send a shitload of audience to them and Google freaked out and did Amp and then all the Publishers had do amp and this was a disaster just broadly all the way around a disaster and then Facebook was like we hate news and they're like actually what we hate is text all of you make videos and everyone pivot to video this equal growing disaster amp turned out to be a huge mess and you couldn't do anything good uh it actually spread misinformation because all the websites look the same I go on about this for days and days and days Google is there there again yep they're afraid of something and so like the ripple effect of that I think is interesting and I think what most of the Publishers that I've talked to what they're interested in is can we make them not copy In Articles amp but copy payments for search because that's what they all want um one thing we haven't talked a lot about on the show um is a bill in the United States called the jcpa the journalism competition preservation act it's funny you would think that the Publishers could all get together and and do and say we're going to pull our content from Google search they have a lot of Leverage if they do it all together you get a lot of Leverage what's left they can't because that would be collusion under the antitrust laws yep uh which is incredible uh so the jcpa is I think it's a cloar bill uh that would create an exemption for Publishers to bargain with large platforms like over a billion in Revenue one of those numbers that like makes it Google and Facebook mhm yeah it's one of those ways of saying Google Facebook without saying Google Facebook it would create an exception to antitrust law so that they could bargain as a unit against large platforms or they could just like rule that Google has built a monopoly yeah there's a lot of that there's there's just a lot of these ideas floating around about how you equalize the bargaining power um anyway I that's I just see the bigger picture which is the Raw Deal is real like people got burned super hard by the Raw Deal of the platforms most of which were will give you some money with no contract that says where the money will come from the Facebook news Partnerships or the Google News initiatives or it was make a thing for us that we want Facebook video or it was we're going to take your stuff for free and pay you an exposure which is Google search and I what I see now is we have a contract yeah right we're just not doing this again you're you're going to pay us money we're going to tell you what you can take and if you don't pay us enough money we'll see you and if you take too much we'll see you and that has a little bit of teeth I don't know if it'll work again I know a lot of media Executives Alex used to work for some of the worst media Executives in game I sure media it's not like they're not all this is not an industry that can see the long game and it's an industry that's under pressure so it might be making mistakes but I I see the difference here I don't know if these are good ideas I don't know if they feel great right like there's a lot of the response yesterday and to all these other deals is do these feel great no but I I think I can identify the differences and I think at least what I see um is well they took the anyway like some money is better than no money yeah and a lot of the deal for a long time was no money that that's definitely where I'm sitting it's like some money is better than no money but also one I want to just point out this is a lightning round and we've been on nei's Lightning sorry sorry sorry for a while and so I want to take over for my life lightning round oh yeah okay you which is also about open AI of course it is because I called it um I just back when when open AI there was the coup and a bunch of the board members were like we we don't like Sam we're firing him everybody gathered around Sam was like no you are baby we love you come back he's now back in charge more powerful than ever right like that that's that's the reporting allegedly like information just said open AI CEO sub control so like that's happening they started they fired all the safety people or pushed him out and start safy committe and he's the head of the safety committe yeah that's that's a choice Sam but uh Helen toner who was one of those board members who who voted to have him kicked off kicked out and then left because he won uh was on a podcast this week and was like yeah we just didn't trust him yeah like he he just was so consistently not telling us the truth we we just lost all trust in him and that is really really interesting to think about as he does cement more power as he does get more powerful as he does put himself in charge of safety at the company and all of those people who were in charge of safety have left and as that company is still technically run by a nonprofit that's whole job is to protect us all from AI like oh buddy yeah that's not working for you I'm actually I'm curious it's been like the scarl Johansson situation has not there's been no new pieces of information it's been pretty quiet on that front yeah that's not going to just end no right it ends with a settlement or a statement or an apology well she's going to do a partnership with open AI as well like no um uh she has some great ideas for all text yeah um but like the the backlash to AI in general but I'll give you this um little data point uh I think there's a real Gap in how people feel about the thing and then what people are doing uh we've never gotten so many sort of like unhappy notes about a deota episode is when we had the co of Adobe on we had some happy ones too people want to hear from that guy he doesn't give a lot of interviews I asked him what he thought a photo was he doesn't know um but then we got a lot of people are like screw this guy yeah we just don't like Adobe we don't like AI like they're ruining everything his comment sort AI are offensive um weird weird right there's a real backlash day I there's negativity one thing he told me that episode um was generative fill is used as much as layers they launched this tool and it is used on the order of layers in photo which is basically people open the app yeah that's how you get layers you open the app like you open the app and then like people use it and so there's a real Gap and I think Sam kind of embodies the Gap yeah right which is he's just the face of boy we're not being very careful with this he's the face of I can do whatever I want cuz I'm so someone's going to call him the bad boy of AI soon I'm sorry I just no there's nothing about his demeanor that supports bad boy I'm sorry it's just not can't it's not GNA happen I'm sorry there's they're much better contenders for bad boy than Sam um but like he's the face of that de yeah which is actually the revealed behavior of many people is that the tools are useful they can be helpful people like them like I'm the nation's foremost hand ringer of what is a photo and I definitely use generative eraser in Lightroom yesterday that's for a family photo that I shared with no one I would use it all the time um Aid noise in Lightroom I think is Magic I I've talked about it has recontextualized how I think about some of my old cameras yeah we were talking about this earlier today where I think a lot of people don't realize how many of the tools we actually use are already AI right like like grammarly is using some sort of a I um Photoshop is all Ai and if you've been using Photoshop for the last 10 years you've been using AI yeah it's there but but I think you're right where it's Sam Alman has become the kind of this the center point and and everybody's talking about him and they're talking about they don't trust him and they don't trust the kind of AI he's doing which is very specific kind right it's it's taking over your search it's uh providing just easy generative content in a way that most AI tools that people use have a very specific purpose and are used for very specific things and he's built the libot and you know open I had this incredibly Byzantine corporate structure was all meant to box in the bad things box in the libot and keep the liot keep it safe and he's torn all that down yeah and now open eye instead of being this weird nonprofit with a profit Center that supports the nonprofit is feels like just Sam alman's company it's called open AI like I I would just I would just point out like their whole thing was being the good guys for so so so long and they made it so far on big Promises of being the good guys and then just like on a dime turned and went the other way I mean wild how fast this has happened right GPT 3.5 hit they're like oh people like this we're evil now just they just put on their little evil helmets but so the interesting thing is they don't again they don't have any Revenue right like this company is not wildly profitable they might be on a path to it they make all this is not important you you've been covering Tech too long to know that did not realize that revenue is not important as long as people will keep giving you money you don't need Revenue which is why I think they make all this noise about AGI all the time right they're like we're we built the future people will keep giving you money uh the number one the funniest uh GPT apps are at now um for everybody and I was just looking the top one in Lifestyles an astrology app and I was like oh this is actually a perfect use case for AI yeah like you be like I'll just make some up about your future uh yeah we should talk about that so WDC is coming up there was some reporting this week that Apple has made the deal to sign with open aai that open will power the stuff interestingly there's some back and forth about whether it will run locally on the phone which should match Apple's privacy promises or go up to the cloud which is fascinating because more powerful more powerful but where will it run there's some reporting I think Mark Gman in Bloomberg reported that they're going to put M2 Ultras or M3 Ultras in a Data Center and have a virtual Black Box oh boy for privacy that that works out every time uh who knows it gives real like Bieber running Mac Minis on your behal Vibes yeah uh and then you've got open ey the mix which is like where's this model going to run can it run on the M2 Ultra or M3 Ultra or whatever um I mean no you can't fit the thing on your phone I'm very confident that you cannot run GPT 40 on your phone locally right but can you Hort it to arm like this thing right right now runs on Nvidia h100s a lot of them yeah like a lot of them uh and you know what two companies hate each other with the fury of a thousand burning Suns is NVIDIA and apple yep but they're also two of the best people at making processors that can handle AI stuff right except for gpus one of them is really good one of them really good at use the other one the other one just took the training wheels off it's I can play Crusader Kings on my laptop so I'm just very curious about how all this will play out because if you're going to run gbd4 there's a chance you're running it on a bunch of h100s in a Microsoft data center which is a real weird place for Apple to be well I thought German's piece this week about about the the deal was also kind of interesting because it seemed to be like they're not going to go full out with all the AI tools it what we're going to see from them at WWDC as far as AI goes is going to be a lot more Adobe like than yeah Scarlet I don't think they're going to chatot and I think that is the right move yes oh that's so fun I totally disagree really I think they are going to go full hard with Siri and I think that's the open AI play is just take the Siri you can talk to and plug it into GPT 40 and instantly it's the best Siri has ever been uh then how you scale that down to like turning off Bluetooth which is a thing that I can do on my phone that does not require the internet is becomes a really interesting AI challeng you just described like the promise of Bigby I mean what what I use Siri for almost exclusively is playing music adding reminders to the reminders app and setting timers and none of those things require pinging GPT 40 they just don't uh but I think Apple like everyone else is going to have to convince investors that it has a chatbot play in order to survive not survive but you know what I mean it's Wall Street wants to see that you have some big new fangled idea and so they're going to do it because they feel like they have to all the interesting AI stuff is going to be the like on device stuff and that's a thing that we're already seeing Apple do well just by putting AI features into Apps you're going to see a lot of it with photos there's a lot of uh noise around AI generated Emoji that's the kind of thing you don't really need open AI for that actually Apple has been working on for a long time the the only reason I can see that you would strike a deal like this with open AI is if you want to blow out the like conversational aspect of things it just FES so much in the face of Apple's security stuff like yeah but so does the Google deal like that's true that's true but the Google deal like we didn't know the terms of the Google deal for years right and whereas this was a fairly public deal with open AI really close it's just been better Ed on because open is the leakiest company in the history of the world just like just holes Everywhere by the way it's only the M2 Ultra this was driving me crazy I kept saying M3 Ultra they because they're on the M4 now so I just assumed they just got a lot of M2 M2 Ultras where they stopped with the they're like is this as good as an h100 open AI tell us I think Apple knows that the idea of the behind is an external perception of the company and they're watching they're watching companies kind of light their brands on fire and not they're just never going to do that they are cautious to the extreme in that way I think this I think this Crush ad disaster for them which was not even about AI it was an iPad app yeah that everyone decided was about AI uh I think they saw that and they were like no like we're we're going to do some stuff in photos and some stuff in emojis well there's going to be stuff in search so I'm sure yeah there's going to be like some like light dusting remember last year where they're like the keyboard has AI in it now and it's like this keyboard is dumb yeah it real bad it's like still pretty bad um they're going to do that kind of thing yeah and I think it might be everywhere they might announce more features but that last turn where it's like do you want to bang an iPad like I don't I don't know if we're gonna get there this time I I think they're very comfortable with the perception that they're quote behind because they're I I think they're watching Google I think they're watching the reaction to their own advertising and this stuff is not ready and the culture around it is too negative that is just my sense from you know just talking to folks but I don't I don't know if I don't know what they're actually going to announce I look forward to we're gonna be there live uh and we're we're doing a podcast in copertino uh and I am going to spend a lot of time gloating on that show about how right I was and I'm really looking forward to it I I really hope David's wrong just so I can gloat I just that's it but I hope you're right for you spiritually David I just I think if you're worried about the stock price of your company and I know that they are you look at what is happening at Microsoft and you say oh we need something like that and what they'll say is they'll make a lot of noise about like all the stuff you can do inside of apps and then it will come around to and also it wants to be your best friend let's hang out also serious Hornet now Tim be like woo can you imagine just imagine Tim Cook being like in serious horny now yeah just flirty with Siri I love it looks Kevin R dead in the eyes all right we got this is this lighting round has ended up in strange places but it's been a good one we'll be right back we have yet another unsponsored lightning round how long is this episode now four hours we're going to talk about ourselves more for another hour three we are currently at 81 minutes all right we gotta we gotta we gotta bring this to a close lightning round style I'm going to bring up the UL power 7 or whatever it's called is that your lightning round this is my lightning round it's been more like a lot of lightning this God this the Sony logo is slightly holographic it looks kind of like oh you're like oh is it lit up no Holograms sometimes I remind people that the verge's entire competitive differentiation is that we love gadgets and I'm telling you this is our entire competive differentiation yeah we both we we freaked out over it for a minute nobody's going to sponsor the lightning round if you just pick up a speaker and talk about how terrific it is every week like get that money from Sony before you do that man come on I don't know how there's a firewall between edit and sales they keep telling me that there's incoming lightning around I think all of our sponsors are going to be like a month late being like remember that time Nei got really weird with our speaker on air Sony I I wish I knew how I think Sony will love your lightning round look if if you're Phil Sony or whoever runs Sony give us a call someone is here to take your call Mega base Ultimate Sound or whatever power Vibes whatever it is power Vibes you all right cray you get I I I ran you over on the last one you get the first one yeah um so it's it's gonna be a gadget and that Fitbit has a new watch for kids the ace the ace the ace LTE and is it a way for you to track your children with GPS yes yes um do you feel comfortable about that I don't know I'm not you if you do this probably is not an exciting gadget for you but uh it seems really cool because it like gamifies Fitness in what appears to be a really nice way Victoria song went and got to check it out I've heard from some other people have gotten to check it out and everybody's just like no this thing rules and I kind of want one for myself yes and like that's the Hallmark of a good ass gadget for kids yeah like you you can take the the band and replace the band and there's like a little tamagachi kind of thing in the watch and so when you replace the band it'll like change it's stuff it's it's sick all adult fitness trackers are like let's talk about your VO2 max and this one's just like make the cool little guy go and like that's how you get me to do stuff come on exactly like this this thing just kind of rules um except it is way too expensive it is $229.95 and it's also called the HTE which is like the least cool kid name I've ever heard it's real bad and also you need a data plan to to get the full richness of it called the ace pass oh boy and uh it is not cheap it is like $10 a month oh that's tough so you I'm G to stick with just putting an air tag yeah just you can you can alternatively stick an air tag in your child and give them a 20-year-old tamagachi there you go and done yeah we're not yet we have not yet hit the let's put an air tag on her what if you glue the air tag to the kagachi I see that's the or 3D print some sort of case I bet Shawn could do that for you yeah no there's there's infinite this is the the entire Etsy economy is weird AI generated crap and then 3D printed stuff it's beautiful and place it you can put your air tag on anything there is a case for it if you want to attach your air tag to a thing you can find a case for it on Etsy yeah all right David what's yours uh I just want to talk about this like slightly weird Discord blog post this week uh the company basically announced it's pivoting back to video games I didn't know it left so this is the thing so in 2020 when Discord was like really feeling itself and there was noise that Discord was going to be acquired for I think like10 billion it was it was the the work from home moment world the world was weird we try not to talk about that period of 2020 very often uh Discord like announced that it was going to be more than just a gaming thing right it wanted to be a a community app for the future of the world and Discord actually has like gotten a lot of things about building a community app really right there are a lot of things about it they're very clever uh I don't think that worked except that people started planning like crypto and crimes in Discord more yeah it turns out there's a lot of like shitty communities out there yeah and not a lot of like Fortune 500 companies running on Discord so anyway so the company pivoted back and is now about gaming again but then made a bunch of small changes that don't really change anything and then said they want to be easier for connecting either before during or after playing a game and I would just point out that's all the time that's still just everything so I think I'm just in a strange place where it was like I forget who it was but somebody in our slack was saying like this is not a message to users this is a message to investors of like we get it it's fine we're we're running away from crypto please stop doing crimes in Discord uh and but I just thought it was very funny it's like Discord was like we will remain Discord just like please only only do games here please yeah I did learn new things from that blog post I didn't know you could have Discord on like the PS5 yeah just clearly I don't like ultimately you can deploy a web app anywhere sometimes you're like what if I deployed this on the PS5 and you're like why it's because it's got a sick process looks cool I mean discord's a really good chat app part of me which is gone more mainstream and instead of like the 50 WhatsApp group chats I'm in I was in a bunch of discords like I feel like I'd feel cooler but alas no I'm in a couple a bunch of discords you're not crimes you're fine I don't do enough crimes no crimes I don't do enough nfts or crimes oh no Alex I'm guessing you're in at least one Flex related Discord I I I'm not but but I did think of the some crimes have definitely happened in some disc I've seen uh by the way Jason was on decoder a while ago uh basically previewing all this if you want to listen to talk about it I was I spent a lot of time being like crimes happen here and he's like I need it to stop like more or less uh and he said to me a really interesting stat he's like most discords are like three people it's just like three or four friends hanging out in a Discord and that's like the vast majority of Discord activity and then the big ones are like for other stuff right um but we talked about why they make games and their app platform and all this stuff and he's like we just do that to dog food like features for the big games all right I'm going to pick one I wanted to pick iix it and Samsung breaking up and uh other repair companies are starting to say they can't pick Samsung stuff either that's boring what I want to pick is uh X the platform formerly known as Twitter now hiding likes wait what I missed this it's very good so they're not hiding likes they're hiding who liked something so you know people used to go on Twitter and like like something you can see all their public likes they're hiding that they're hiding replies they're doing this because Bros keep liking porn yeah that's not that's all the funniest stuff on Twitter that was the best like when Tim Ted Tim Cruz Ted Cruz like was like I love this it's very good uh it is the funniest sign of a platform in Decline that its user base is now so stupid they don't even have fake accounts to like porn I was hearing about there's there's some apparently some some male reporters who love to to like models on Instagram and they don't know that they get the little the Emoji also is shared on threads so uh pretty good be be thoughtful if you're going to be horny don't be horny on Main look how do you increase Android phone sales buy a burner phone to do horny stuff all right are you listening to me Google that's what the pixel is for horny stuff it's pretty good actually buy a burner pixel just for the horny stuff a reer pixel five with that beautiful red case it's it's available to you it's just an idea I have to increase your sales save your company um Twitter X is saying um you soon you'll be able to like without worrying who might see it we want to encourage people to like more edgy content they use the word edgy wow we want you to like your porn more often uh I'm if you are the sort of person who describes your own work as edgy not edgy like I don't know it's like it's like Sam Alman is the bad boy of it's like he can't be like he would love it he would like it so much that he'll never get it Elon wants Twitter to be edgy so much he'll never have it uh I just think this is truly one of the funniest changes any social platform has ever made there's like other reasons right like I'm I'm confident Elon wants the weird racists who now populate Twitter to be able to like weird racist posts without seeing it like yep yeah there's there's a deep dark will you be able there go into the likes and look at the likes still no other people can't see them at all right yeah you yourself will be able to see who liked your posts okay um you can see the like counts for posts like public like counts but you will not see who likes someone else's post and you will not see others you will not see what other people like I cannot wait for one of those creators of edgy content to get fed up with their edgy followers and just put them all on the saddest little black book in the world yeah the saddest little blackbook it'll be so good uh it's I mean it's truly deeply wonderfully hilarious uh platform and decline just doing the weirdest stuff you can have I just really like the idea of ultimately doing good healthy things by removing engagement metrics in the service of making your platform easier to be sketchy on like I think that's great Twitter is going to end up X is going to end up I think as a porn platform like I think they will find a way to subsume only fans because it's the last thing left for them to do it's video first now supposedly oh yeah L she appeared she had not appeared anyway anywhere since the code conference from what I understand um which went great for her can you repeat the question uh and she appeared and said X is now a video first platform for creators and everyone went what you don't make any videos Elon Musk never makes a video on his video first but if you want to make horny videos you can and secretly like them yep Ted Cruz is just going to be a static all right I'm just saying and we are in a new era of the internet right I don't know what's gonna happen to the web but I know this is the UL Power Sound era and I'm convinced this is the horny burner Android phone era for when you're urged to like something is irresistible but you don't want anyone to pixel 6A like I just got to hit that heart yeah you want them to know but you don't don't want anyone else to know that's actually a great like opposite of what happens on iPhone stays on iPhone messaging for Google when you want them to know but no one else to know that Google picks Android you're just doing Google's job today I'm trying man I'm trying to help everybody all right it's someone give us some money somehow lightning rounds available for horny pixel sponsorship all right that's it we're way over time I appreciate you all we want your feedback I'm I'm very sincere about this I know people have a lot of feelings we are here to earn your trust in whatever way that this previous segment earned your trust uh send us a note you can reach out to us you can call David at some phone number 866 Verge one1 call the hotline see it call us we'll we'll answer your questions again we we're not trying to hide the ball here at all but we are trying to go home to our families so that's it that's our Chast rock and roll and that's it for the Verge cast this week hey we love to hear from you give us a call at 866 Verge one1 the vergecast is a production of The Verge and VOX media podcast Network our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James that's it we'll see you next week all right Alex just made a huge discovery on the ul7 or whatever this thing is called tell us what the ports are um okay we got we got a light button we got we got a battery button with a minus sign for battery care okay key control TR I don't I don't know music that's for karaoke okay Echo guitar we got a guitar input right this thing rules I don't know I there's a lot going on down there these are all fully karaoke controls and then you can play a guitar through I sure I don't know what battery minus care does I really want to know but probably not today on The Verge cast two three four five boy can I there we go there it goes it's got some Numa Numa energy right yeah it always starts in the middle which I really like I love you this thing fills me with pure joy you're so happy like every other tech company is like we got to do some AI stuff that the robots are going to bang you like let's just threaten everyone and Son's like here's what's going to happen the bass speakers on the side really yeah Sony is like we're put rgbs in the bass speakers also it's called UL Power Sound now and that's our business it's good\n"