Speaker 1: From Bahart where Innovation, money and power collie in Silicon Valley, Nbon.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlove.
Speaker 3: And Caroline Heind and Bloomberg's weldad quarters in New York.
Speaker 4: Ed Ludlow is in sun Valley, and this is Bloomberg
Speaker 4: Technology coming up. The FTC losers its requests are temporarily
Speaker 4: block Microsoft from closing at sixty nine billion dollar takeover
Speaker 4: of Activision Blizzard.
Speaker 3: But what about the UK? We'll bring in the details.
Speaker 3: And Hollywood comes to a halt.
Speaker 4: Actors join writers in their strike, bringing productions of films
Speaker 4: to a standstill. Amid the first sultaneous walkout since nineteen sixty,
Speaker 4: Glass as General to AI takes the world by storm.
Speaker 4: Governments are scrambling to regulate. We sit downward, DiDia rangers
Speaker 4: European Commissioner for Justice discuss the steps that EU is
Speaker 4: taking to rein in or just put god rails on
Speaker 4: the technology. Now, everyone's a winner right now in the
Speaker 4: stock market. And look when it comes to legality, none,
Speaker 4: everyone's a winner again. The FTC losing its request for
Speaker 4: a California judge to temporarily block Microsoft from actually closing
Speaker 4: that sixteen nine billion dollar takeover of Activision Blizzard. That's,
Speaker 4: of course, while the agency appeals her initial ruling to
Speaker 4: greenlight the deal. Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow joins us Now from
Speaker 4: Sun Valley, you are helping break those scoops, not only
Speaker 4: about what's happening in the UK, but just bring us
Speaker 4: up to speed with the fact that look, this date,
Speaker 4: her eighteenth is hurdling towards us.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there are lots of moving parts. I think the
Speaker 5: big umbrella point is that sources tell Dina Basley and
Speaker 5: Ilan and myself that there's a high degree of confidence
Speaker 5: that this deal will close by or on Tuesday July eighteenth.
Speaker 5: The development at the last hour is that the UK
Speaker 5: Antitrust Appeals Court has called a hearing for Monday the seventeenth,
Speaker 5: where they will hear Microsoft and Activisions appeal against the
Speaker 5: original u KCMA decision. But remember that all they can
Speaker 5: appeal is an issue of procedural impropriety. They can't challenge
Speaker 5: the decision itself, just how they came to that conclusion. Now,
Speaker 5: what we reported last night is that what they're offering
Speaker 5: to the CMA as an appeasement is to sell the
Speaker 5: rights for cloud based gaming in the UK to a
Speaker 5: third party, another media or telecoms company. One source suggested
Speaker 5: private equity could be involved. And what we're hearing from
Speaker 5: the merger ofs if that's it. If all they have
Speaker 5: to do is go to the UKCMA and say, well,
Speaker 5: we'll sell the rights for cloud in that country. It's
Speaker 5: a small price to pay to get the deal done.
Speaker 4: But to a large extent of course that yeah, they
Speaker 4: don't want behavioral changes, they want actual sales or real impact.
Speaker 4: What about what's happening in the US, Because if they
Speaker 4: do sell off those rights in the UK, well they
Speaker 4: not have to replicate that elsewhere. And what will the
Speaker 4: FDC continue to do in terms of its own appeals process.
Speaker 5: It's just so strange how all of these different dates
Speaker 5: and timelines running parallel. So what we're waiting on is
Speaker 5: the ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether
Speaker 5: they put a stay on proceedings. Right, this is the
Speaker 5: appeal the FDC made to the US District Court in
Speaker 5: San Francisco. The decision made July tenth. But if that
Speaker 5: stay doesn't come, the deadline in the US is midnight.
Speaker 5: San Francisco time tonight or three am Eastern time Saturday morning.
Speaker 5: So you could have a situation where the deal closes
Speaker 5: technically here in the United States without any regulatory inhibition
Speaker 5: or prohibition, and then still have the CMA process going
Speaker 5: on in parallel beyond that. What I'm hearing here in
Speaker 5: some valley is no one really gets what the FDC
Speaker 5: is doing. And I think you've got a great guest
Speaker 5: coming up.
Speaker 1: You can ask for this.
Speaker 5: Why are they picking a fight that many think they
Speaker 5: can't win anyway? And so it's coming down to the wire.
Speaker 5: But that's why we love this story. Yeah, things that
Speaker 5: come down to the wire, Caroline, a.
Speaker 4: Bit of drama. Ed, You're going to keep the drama
Speaker 4: flowing from some valley. We thank you very much. Indeed,
Speaker 4: let's get to that great guest, of course, Marien Olahosen,
Speaker 4: former Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. She's now chairs
Speaker 4: the Global Anti Trust and Competition practice at the law
Speaker 4: firm Banka Bots And it's great to have some time
Speaker 4: with you. Moyne, and boy, it's complex. Can you just
Speaker 4: answer that initial perspective from Ed? Why is the FTC
Speaker 4: appealing this? Why take these challenges that are very hard
Speaker 4: to win.
Speaker 6: The current leadership of the FTC has decided that they
Speaker 6: want to try to move any trust law in a
Speaker 6: different direction than the courts and the agencies have brought
Speaker 6: the law for many years. Any trust in the US
Speaker 6: is common lots into a ridd case like case, and
Speaker 6: they've decided that they want to go in a kind
Speaker 6: of a starkly different direction. So they keep bringing forward
Speaker 6: cases with their aggressive theories, but the courts are not
Speaker 6: finding them convincing. They're not finding them fencing on the
Speaker 6: facts and sometimes and I think in the Microsoft that
Speaker 6: division challenge on the law and certainly on the economics.
Speaker 6: So I think the leadership feels that they want to
Speaker 6: try to push the boundaries, but the courts are not
Speaker 6: just simply not amenable to that. The courts look at
Speaker 6: what's you know, what's the precedent, what's the case law,
Speaker 6: what you know are the standards that are ready in place.
Speaker 4: Ultimately, they're worried that these sorts of vertical deals can
Speaker 4: ultimately end up just with companies having far too much
Speaker 4: control and indeed monopolistic sort of outcomes. Do you have
Speaker 4: any sympathy for that at all, whether or not we
Speaker 4: see the law as it stands, being sympathetic to it.
Speaker 6: If there is good evidence that a merger, whether it's
Speaker 6: a horizontal or vertical merger, may substantially lessen competition, they're
Speaker 6: the strong basis in the law to block those deals.
Speaker 6: Are to have remedies in those kinds of deals that
Speaker 6: preserve competition. You know, when I was the chair, we
Speaker 6: brought some vertical merger challenges and we had settlements in those,
Speaker 6: but I do think there, you know.
Speaker 1: The law certainly prohibits it.
Speaker 6: The question is do they actually have the evidence to
Speaker 6: convince a court that the deal, whether it's horizontal or
Speaker 6: horizontal or vertical deal, will actually meet that legal standard.
Speaker 6: And the government bears the burden of persuasion. They have
Speaker 6: to persuade the court that it would substantially lessen competition,
Speaker 6: and they just haven't carried that burden.
Speaker 4: What about Congress weighing in here more broadly, And some
Speaker 4: have been saying, look, as it stands, the way in
Speaker 4: which we interpret the law isn't right, and the way
Speaker 4: in which we see competition is outdated.
Speaker 3: Do you think that that's the case. Do you think
Speaker 3: we would ever see.
Speaker 4: The ways in which we judge the legality of such
Speaker 4: deals being altered by Congress.
Speaker 6: There has been some interest in members of Congress in
Speaker 6: changing the law, but it just hasn't gotten the support
Speaker 6: of the broad membership of Congress to do that. Look,
Speaker 6: anti trust law is not static, as economic learning, as
Speaker 6: our understanding of markets. As markets themselves change, anti trust
Speaker 6: law the case does need to change too, and it's
Speaker 6: generally been done through case by case enforcement and we've
Speaker 6: seen those developments. We've seen when I was at the
Speaker 6: FTC winning cases before the Supreme Court that supported our
Speaker 6: enforcement efforts. So it's not that the law, the current
Speaker 6: law is totally static. But to make this sort of
Speaker 6: big break from showing what's a substantial lessening of competition
Speaker 6: or departing from the consumer welfare standard, which is really
Speaker 6: the load store for antitrust, would necessitate new law in Congress,
Speaker 6: and we just haven't seen the momentum for such a
Speaker 6: lot of pass now.
Speaker 4: No, your expertise is so important to us because you
Speaker 4: were the acting head of the FTC under the Trump era,
Speaker 4: But I'm interested in your perspective overseas. What do you
Speaker 4: make of the UK and the way in which we
Speaker 4: could see yet well further sales would be fools of
Speaker 4: Microsoft and Activision in this particular instance. And ultimately would
Speaker 4: that mean that would have to be done worldwide?
Speaker 1: Well, it really depends.
Speaker 6: You know, the CMAS the authority is only for impacts
Speaker 6: in the UK, so that would be very sort of
Speaker 6: facts specifican market dependent on whether you know some sort
Speaker 6: of remedy that was limited to the UK would address
Speaker 6: those concerns. But the CMA is kind of out on
Speaker 6: a limb at this point right it's the European Commission.
Speaker 1: Cleared the DAL.
Speaker 6: The US thus far has not a block the deal.
Speaker 6: It's been approved by regulators around the world, So I
Speaker 6: think you know they're in a very position and is
Speaker 6: there some sort of last minute remedy that will you know,
Speaker 6: assuage their concerns and allow them to approve the deal?
Speaker 6: I think you do is something that's under intent. I
Speaker 6: assume is under intense discussion given given the state of play.
Speaker 4: In your current role sharing the global antrusts and competition
Speaker 4: practice at the Little fem Baker Votes, what are you
Speaker 4: advising clients in this current well environment we currently in.
Speaker 3: Do we think that deals have got harder to be
Speaker 3: done or all?
Speaker 6: It's kind of a twofold question. The process of getting
Speaker 6: your deal done. The approval process is likely to be
Speaker 6: more onerous and take longer. You may have to produce
Speaker 6: more documents, you may have to, you know, sort of
Speaker 6: engage in theories that weren't really strongly supported in the
Speaker 6: case law. But if the regulator brings them up, you
Speaker 6: have to talk about them, you have to address them.
Speaker 6: But ultimately, what we're finding is if the deal makes sense,
Speaker 6: if it's pro competitive, our recommendation is you should.
Speaker 1: Go forward with it.
Speaker 6: The law itself has not changed, and that's I think
Speaker 6: what we're seeing in these repeated failures of particularly the
Speaker 6: FTC to win these challenges. So ultimately, for clients.
Speaker 1: That's what they need to decide.
Speaker 6: Are they willing to kind of go through a process
Speaker 6: that has been made more onerous, specifically made more onerous,
Speaker 6: I think to try to deter some mergers even if
Speaker 6: they can't win in court by saying they're any competitive.
Speaker 6: But if a merging party is willing to go through that,
Speaker 6: they have the same chance that they had in the
Speaker 6: past of winning if there is an appeal, because the
Speaker 6: courts are sticking to the case law and the you know,
Speaker 6: the requirements that were already in place. They're not buying
Speaker 6: these new theories.
Speaker 4: Former acting chair or the f and indeed FTC Commissioner
Speaker 4: wor own Oldhausen, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Indeed some great expertise there.
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, coming up, the court cases keep on coming, and
Speaker 4: the loss is a federal court decision on a crypto
Speaker 4: case involving Ripple Labs seen as potentially narrowing the SEC's oversight.
Speaker 3: We're on that. Why next as a bloomberg.
Speaker 4: Or it was long awaited, the ruling came in the
Speaker 4: case for the SEC versus Ripple, and it's send crypto
Speaker 4: Twitter into a frenzy in token prices soaring yesterday. The
Speaker 4: ruling XLP the token associated with Ripple is a security,
Speaker 4: but when.
Speaker 3: Offered to institution investors, not the general public an emotion.
Speaker 4: Anibassek is here to break down what is a nuanced
Speaker 4: ruling about four.
Speaker 3: Different parts of it.
Speaker 4: But the takeaway for many is that, look, the SEC
Speaker 4: perhaps doesn't.
Speaker 3: Have so many grounds to stand on here.
Speaker 7: Well, importantly, I think is that the individual investors means
Speaker 7: a purchasing Ripple was deemed not a security through the
Speaker 7: use of buying them through public exchanges. And so remember
Speaker 7: when the SEC sued Ripple and its founder is here,
Speaker 7: they were really suing on the basis of more than
Speaker 7: one billion dollars worth of sales on about half of
Speaker 7: that is covered as not a security by this lawsuit,
Speaker 7: but the other half, the institutional sales part is also
Speaker 7: worth looking at.
Speaker 3: With the retail part.
Speaker 7: It is interesting because when you look at all those
Speaker 7: suits put together by the SEC, there are more than
Speaker 7: a dozen tokens really listed here by the SEC as
Speaker 7: alleged securities.
Speaker 1: And so when you're.
Speaker 7: Talking here about the idea that maybe the SEC doesn't
Speaker 7: have so many grounds to stand on here, it's of
Speaker 7: those nineteen or so tokens that we are talking about,
Speaker 7: are they securities? Aren't they securities? If they're listed on exchanges,
Speaker 7: are they still securities?
Speaker 3: That is the fight that's.
Speaker 7: Going to keep on playing out. You saw coinbasi stock
Speaker 7: yesterday react with twenty five percent jump almost here. That
Speaker 7: has brought coinbases advance this year to almost two hundred percent,
Speaker 7: And it is on the grounds that they are fighting
Speaker 7: also the SEC on this idea that they had listed
Speaker 7: all these unregistered securities, and so the exchange coinbase in
Speaker 7: particular was very very quick to move on relisting XRP.
Speaker 7: And you know in vain what the court head.
Speaker 4: Said fascinating and we will continue to see the ramifications.
Speaker 4: Solanas up a lot today on the finance token as well,
Speaker 4: whereas perhaps we fade a little bit on Ripple's initial move.
Speaker 4: Shnale is the busiest woman in the house. Of course,
Speaker 4: she's just been doing all of the bank kernings and
Speaker 4: still across as we thank her. And of course just
Speaker 4: a note that my husband is a senior manager over
Speaker 4: at Coinbase. Meanwhile, you want to stick on this storey,
Speaker 4: You've got to stick with Bloomberg, because you want to
Speaker 4: hear from the Ripple Lab CEO Brad garling House himself,
Speaker 4: as well as Pat Toomey, former Senator of Pennsylvania, a
Speaker 4: member of the Global Advisory Council over at Coinbase. Those
Speaker 4: two conversations with our own Schcenali coming up in the
Speaker 4: next hour. Meanwhile, turning to a loss in the tech community,
Speaker 4: entrepreneur Nick Hungford has died after a battle with terminal
Speaker 4: bone cancer. Mister Hungerford co founded the successful investment platform
Speaker 4: Nutmeg in twenty eleven. The idea was famously rejected forty
Speaker 4: five times in a row by funders, but the business.
Speaker 3: Was went on to strength.
Speaker 4: To Strength was bought by JP Morgan in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: one for reported seven hundred million pounds. Nutmeg said in
Speaker 4: a statement that mister Hungerford was one of Britain's most
Speaker 4: successful fintech entrepreneurs. Nick Hungerford was forty three years old.
Speaker 4: Major League Soccer, I mean, I call it football, but
Speaker 4: you call it soccer, could be the next US sports
Speaker 4: league to allow sovereign wealth funds to invest in its teams,
Speaker 4: with the league's more board members set up to discuss
Speaker 4: the topic in a meeting next week in Washington. As all,
Speaker 4: according to the MLS Commissioner Don Gaba, who sat down
Speaker 4: with their own ed Ludlow over there in some valley,
Speaker 4: they discussed this, how the league attracted learn On Messi
Speaker 4: and their Apple TV ownership take a listen.
Speaker 8: Obviously, an enormous amount of money that includes not just
Speaker 8: what he gets paid, but the uniqueness of our league
Speaker 8: having a partner in Apple that can share in helping
Speaker 8: us attract someone like Messi, partnership with Adidas who can
Speaker 8: come in and be part of that program.
Speaker 5: Is that your idea.
Speaker 8: It was our The league does all these unique things
Speaker 8: where we've talked about David Beckham and the uniqueness of
Speaker 8: that deal. We've got partners in the League office in
Speaker 8: terms of how we're structured, and a very ambitious owner
Speaker 8: in the Moss family in Miami, putting together a deal
Speaker 8: that I think was more attractive to Messi and his
Speaker 8: family than playing in Saudi Arabia. And we're going over
Speaker 8: back to Barcelona, where he'd been before.
Speaker 5: You mentioned that this was a competition between Saudi Arabia
Speaker 5: understandings Barcelona are also thought to bring their son home.
Speaker 5: You won. What was the one biggest factor that brought
Speaker 5: Messi to the MLS.
Speaker 8: You know, America's a rising stock nation and our league
Speaker 8: is driving a lot of that momentum. And you get
Speaker 8: a generational player who has an opportunity to not just
Speaker 8: have a legacy as the best player the goat, if
Speaker 8: you will, but also be part of driving enormous momentum
Speaker 8: for the years leading up to the World Cup. Copa
Speaker 8: America will be here next summer, The Fiva Club World
Speaker 8: Cup will be here in twenty five, US Canada, Mexico
Speaker 8: will the Holts the World Cup in twenty twenty six,
Speaker 8: and Messi will be the continual part of that narrative.
Speaker 8: He'd make a lot of money in Saudi Arabia and
Speaker 8: I'm sure that was attractive to him go back home.
Speaker 5: As you said, a favorite rain is a great point though,
Speaker 5: in that Saudi is so present in professional football soccer.
Speaker 5: Have you met with the Saudis about investing in the MLS.
Speaker 8: No, we haven't ed, but interestingly, years ago when they
Speaker 8: were forming their league, we did the same with the Kataris.
Speaker 8: We advise them. You know, MLS has a unique structure.
Speaker 8: It was an emerging league that had to capture this
Speaker 8: unique opportunity that Saudis are heavily invested in trying to
Speaker 8: make their league more successful, more popular. The Saudi folk,
Speaker 8: the people who live there are very passionate about the game.
Speaker 8: The Chinese have tried to do that with the president,
Speaker 8: try to make football a big part of the unique
Speaker 8: experience for fans. We'll see how it all plays out.
Speaker 8: It certainly is an intriguing, disruptive part of what's going
Speaker 8: on in.
Speaker 5: Our broadly open to sovereign money investing at a franchise
Speaker 5: level or in the league.
Speaker 8: We are and beyond the uniqueness of our structure where
Speaker 8: we have private equity investing in our league. Ari's Capital
Speaker 8: invested in our Miami team just very recently, but the
Speaker 8: NHL and the NBA have looked at having sovereign funds
Speaker 8: and pension funds mls looking at the same thing very timely.
Speaker 8: News will likely discuss that at our board meeting in Miami.
Speaker 8: I'm sorry in DC next week at our All Star Game.
Speaker 4: I'm an ESS commissioner Don Gama with our own at Badlaine.
Speaker 4: Now from sports to movies entertainment, Hay. For the first
Speaker 4: time in six decades, Hollywood writers and actors are on
Speaker 4: strike at the same time, cataclysm for hundreds of thousands
Speaker 4: of film and TV workers. Bloomberg Technology executive editor Tom Jazz,
Speaker 4: I'm so pleased to say, joins me now to really
Speaker 4: what we sort of saw coming.
Speaker 3: It feels dramatic.
Speaker 4: We had actors walking out of premieres for the latest
Speaker 4: movie over in the UK.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, I mean, as you said, the first time
Speaker 9: in six decades. This is all about how technology is
Speaker 9: disrupting the way that films and television are produced and distributed.
Speaker 9: Sixty years ago, it was all about this thing, this
Speaker 9: new thing called TV, a relatively new thing called TV,
Speaker 9: and what it meant for the distribution of films that
Speaker 9: were traditionally shown just in theaters. Now it's all about streaming.
Speaker 9: This is a question of our actors writers compensated adequately
Speaker 9: when their work is streamed on all these new services.
Speaker 9: Has been this proliferation over the last decade of different
Speaker 9: ways that you can watch and save and distribute films
Speaker 9: and television shows and pay structures the actors and writers
Speaker 9: will tell us have not kept paid.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm seeing some placards being held as we're currently
Speaker 4: looking at our screens now, Tom, some of them mentioning AI.
Speaker 4: You and I talking about AI left right center at
Speaker 4: the moment. Why are the actors talking about it too?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 9: I mean, is AI going to replace our jobs? We
Speaker 9: think about it as journalists, right, Will the AI, you
Speaker 9: know put us out of work? What actors and writers
Speaker 9: are concerned about is the ways that studios might use
Speaker 9: artificial intelligence to create create scripts to you know, even
Speaker 9: the imagery around you know, can somebody's face be put
Speaker 9: on a different body? How can we use this technology
Speaker 9: to reduce the cost of writing, producing, getting these programs
Speaker 9: out into the public, and is there a way that
Speaker 9: it's going to kind of make actors' time actors they're
Speaker 9: what they their their bodies, their faces in some ways obsolete.
Speaker 9: These are all somewhat hypothetical at this point. There's a
Speaker 9: lot of skepticism over exactly how far you can rely
Speaker 9: on artificial intelligence to create this these products. Yeah, but
Speaker 9: it's a concern.
Speaker 3: Tom great speaking with you.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Blueberg Technology Executive editor Tom Giles on the
Speaker 4: drama in La from New York. There's a Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to Blueberg Technology. I'm Caroen Hid in New York.
Speaker 4: This week's meta competitor to Twitter. Saw what one hundred
Speaker 4: million users now on the Threads platform, but is it
Speaker 4: here to stay?
Speaker 3: We're still seeing that enthusiasm continue.
Speaker 4: And please to welcome to the show launch and I
Speaker 4: Push is vice president of corporate Development at Jennysmack, a
Speaker 4: company focused on that profined content creators. Also your host
Speaker 4: of the Creator Upload podcast and previously rank creative Partnerships
Speaker 4: for Facebook. I'm also welcoming megst Alex Birinka, who can
Speaker 4: perhaps first and foremost give us an update and what
Speaker 4: it's like on Threads at the moment. There was so
Speaker 4: much hype and enthusiasm last week.
Speaker 3: Are we starting to see that dial back a little bit?
Speaker 10: We're seeing maybe a little bit, Caroline, when I first
Speaker 10: logged on, there was a lot of folks with a
Speaker 10: lot of curiosity, and maybe those were curiosity sign ups
Speaker 10: saying what's this all about?
Speaker 1: I asked, what's the vibe? Right now?
Speaker 10: The vibe seems to be in my thread A lot
Speaker 10: of memes, not a lot of news, so a distinct
Speaker 10: difference from what I see on Twitter. But just in
Speaker 10: the last twenty four hours, we've actually gotten some data
Speaker 10: from some data analytics firms like censor Tower and similar Web,
Speaker 10: who are saying that maybe some of that initial curiosity
Speaker 10: excitement has fallen off. They're saying that traffic has fallen
Speaker 10: by about twenty percent from last week, that usage time
Speaker 10: is down to eight to ten minutes from twenty minutes
Speaker 10: last week. So that initial bump and curiosity is maybe
Speaker 10: not leading to at least a month's worth of eccended engagement.
Speaker 10: Of what we're seeing on threads right.
Speaker 4: Now, Well, let's get a take of someone who's helping
Speaker 4: advise all these creators, Lauren, is the enthusiasm there is
Speaker 4: it real? Are they wanting to take part in the
Speaker 4: conversation somewhere other than Twitter?
Speaker 11: I mean, I think absolutely. I think that the time.
Speaker 11: First of all, nobody, when done right, nobody doesn't launch
Speaker 11: better than Zuck. I mean, it has been glorious this launch, right,
Speaker 11: the seamlessness nature of it, the Golden ticket. If you
Speaker 11: search threads in Instagram, a Golden ticket comes up and
Speaker 11: then it takes you to the app to download. Everybody
Speaker 11: I'm talking to and everything I'm seeing is saying like
Speaker 11: it really is living up to this promise of a
Speaker 11: more friendly sort of environment, which is what Zuck and
Speaker 11: Missouri are sort of trying to promise.
Speaker 12: Now.
Speaker 11: Whether or not they can maintain that, there's so many
Speaker 11: we've seen that Facebook meta knows how to grow platforms.
Speaker 11: Do they know how to manage them?
Speaker 1: I don't really know, but right now not really seeing
Speaker 1: a lot of drop off.
Speaker 11: Sort of anecdotally, I think it's totally to be expected
Speaker 11: that you get that initial curiosity in a little bit
Speaker 11: of like a downturn right after. But like even the
Speaker 11: numbers Alex just mentioned don't seem, in my opinion, to
Speaker 11: indicate that this is.
Speaker 1: Going anywhere, going away anytime soon.
Speaker 10: And Lauren, I am curious as you're talking to creators.
Speaker 10: Obviously we've seen them navigate to platforms where they can
Speaker 10: continue to build their business. Being fun is great, being
Speaker 10: curious is great. But over the long term, creators have
Speaker 10: this hard mentality They go to where the money is
Speaker 10: or where the audience is. What are they seeing in
Speaker 10: Threads right now? Like what are those kind of draw points,
Speaker 10: what are the shiny objects that you're either seeing right
Speaker 10: now or this kind of long term promise of what
Speaker 10: Meta can do gets them excited about the Threads platform.
Speaker 11: Well the long term, you know, as you said, it's
Speaker 11: where everybody is kind of right now, right like, and
Speaker 11: I don't think anybody was exc about Twitter. And also
Speaker 11: you have to remember that, like Threads is being built
Speaker 11: on the back of both both Facebook and Instagram. We
Speaker 11: used to always say when I was on Instagram, like
Speaker 11: we used to get to sort of like, you know,
Speaker 11: learn from the mistakes of Facebook. Now Threads gets to
Speaker 11: learn from the mistakes of both Facebook and Instagram, which
Speaker 11: is like a pretty solid place to be. Not to
Speaker 11: mention the incredible you know, ad sales infrastructure that Meta
Speaker 11: brings along to the table so I think that in
Speaker 11: just very early conversations, people are confident that there's some
Speaker 11: sort of monetization that's probably being thought of, and I
Speaker 11: can't imagine that's not true on the sort of the metaside.
Speaker 1: So right now, you know, at the very least, it's
Speaker 1: about distribution.
Speaker 11: And because you can port over your followers and you
Speaker 11: know who you're following, sorry from Instagram directly, therefore people
Speaker 11: are going to be following you, you know, faster than
Speaker 11: they would on a brand new platform. Like creators to
Speaker 11: your point, are going where the people are, and they're there,
Speaker 11: so they're very curious. I mean, you've seen mister beast
Speaker 11: is I think giving away a testla for everybody that
Speaker 11: follows him. Maybe we'd all have hundreds of millions of
Speaker 11: followers ifficative gaveaway teslas. I don't know, but I think
Speaker 11: they're all there and they're excited right now and.
Speaker 10: Talking about what's exciting right now. You have Musk maybe
Speaker 10: keying into some of this excitement. Just in the last
Speaker 10: ten minutes. He responded to a tweet on Twitter asking
Speaker 10: him whether he would actually bring in photos and captions
Speaker 10: to Twitter, and he said it's definitely a future we
Speaker 10: should consider. So as we see kind of the continuation
Speaker 10: of these platforms, maybe lifting some features from each side.
Speaker 10: How are creators thinking about differentiation when it comes to
Speaker 10: the folks who are both on Twitter and are on threads.
Speaker 10: Are there things that are core to the platform that
Speaker 10: have them thinking about those two things differently or is
Speaker 10: there some efficient cross posting going on that's helpful on
Speaker 10: both sides.
Speaker 11: Well, I think, first of all, also just you know,
Speaker 11: Elon taking advantage of like launching monetization in the last
Speaker 11: couple days, I think that was actually really smart of him.
Speaker 11: Do I think that that's like a great idea considering
Speaker 11: there's no trust in safety on Twitter right now. I mean,
Speaker 11: I feel like monetization plus no trust in safety is
Speaker 11: like kind of a disaster waiting to happen, you can
Speaker 11: imagine in terms of you know, listen, I think that
Speaker 11: right now. And of course, Jelly smack my work helps creators. This,
Speaker 11: you know, having to post on different platforms and different
Speaker 11: types of content is you know, is a really big
Speaker 11: sort of you know, burden to creators, and so anything
Speaker 11: that anybody can do to offset that is always welcome.
Speaker 11: In terms of cross posting to both platforms, too soon
Speaker 11: to tell, right, I think what we are seeing though,
Speaker 11: it's a different kind of you know, creator user on
Speaker 11: you know, Threads versus Twitter. Right, like becoming people on
Speaker 11: Instagram weren't necessarily on Twitter or power Twitter users. So
Speaker 11: I think it's a little bit too early to tell
Speaker 11: in terms of like how that content's going to sort
Speaker 11: of overlap or not. But I definitely feel like creators
Speaker 11: are on Threads if anything, because it comes from Instagram,
Speaker 11: it's they. I think by the very nature of that,
Speaker 11: it seems to be a bit more creator friendly of
Speaker 11: a platform, at least from perception point of view.
Speaker 1: Right now, when are.
Speaker 4: You thinking that the appetizing gets turned online.
Speaker 1: Well, much sooner than later.
Speaker 11: I do think that they if I would hope that
Speaker 11: they are thinking about their own trust and safety and
Speaker 11: how to moderate this. Again, learning from the mistakes of
Speaker 11: the past, I know that they're going to move quicker
Speaker 11: than they ever have before. I mean, I was at
Speaker 11: Facebook before monetization was there at all, and that was
Speaker 11: just really painful waiting for that to come out. They
Speaker 11: have so much more infrastructure, so I think within the
Speaker 11: first year you're if not, you know even sooner, you're
Speaker 11: going to see some sort of monetization, but I think
Speaker 11: they need to like first, they have to launch ads first, right,
Speaker 11: So that's going to happen pretty soon, I imagine.
Speaker 1: And by the way, let's talk about brands.
Speaker 11: Brands are leaving flocking too threads because they've left Twitter
Speaker 11: because of the lack of trust and safety. They can't
Speaker 11: risk their brands being next to really sort of undesirable content.
Speaker 11: So you've got brands like Netflix, Lift, Wendy's, Spotify, all
Speaker 11: these brands that are just flocking to threads to build
Speaker 11: up their platform, and with the brands comes the money.
Speaker 4: Monetization soon follows with your analysis of all the places
Speaker 4: your content creators could be. I mean, we have heard
Speaker 4: a relative amount from Twitter recently under the new leadership
Speaker 4: of Linda Yakarino about round safety, trying to ensure that
Speaker 4: those advertisers get back on board and get comfortable. Are
Speaker 4: you really still seeing reasons to be as concerned as
Speaker 4: previous at the moment? And do think that what we're
Speaker 4: talking about is people leaving in droves or is the
Speaker 4: reality actually.
Speaker 11: That leaving right whether I don't know if they're deactivating,
Speaker 11: whether or not they're posting or spending as much time there.
Speaker 1: Listen, she's there to solve this problem.
Speaker 11: But the problem is is like is she really CEO right,
Speaker 11: like Elon's not sort of backing down on anything, and
Speaker 11: so time will tell, right, Like she's a pro, she
Speaker 11: has the relationships with brands, and so you know, I
Speaker 11: believe her that that is like her number one goal.
Speaker 11: I don't believe necessarily it's going to.
Speaker 4: Happen, Landishneffer of Jelly Smack and our own Alex Birinka.
Speaker 4: I mean, thank you so much. Great conversation of the
Speaker 4: social media were still going. Meanwhile, coming up, I'm going
Speaker 4: to have plenty more regarding actually some of those content concerns.
Speaker 4: We're going to get it from over an EU. That's
Speaker 4: next because of Bloomberg Technology. Time now for talking tech.
Speaker 4: First up, US shoppers. You spent twelve point seven billion
Speaker 4: dollars online during Amazon's forty eight hour Prime Day event,
Speaker 4: up six percent from a year ago, but short of
Speaker 4: estimates for nine and a half percent growth. According to
Speaker 4: figures from Adobe, an increasing share of customers are actually
Speaker 4: using by now pay later services. Adobe said, look, that's
Speaker 4: indicating that shoppers are perhaps concerned more about the economy Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: open ai has lost another board member with the departure
Speaker 4: of former Texas Representative Will Hurd, who announced at the
Speaker 4: end of June that he is entering the field for
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four presidential candidates. Now Herd is the third
Speaker 4: director to lead the chatcheeptam makers board this year. Plus well,
Speaker 4: stability ai co founder has sued the company, claiming he
Speaker 4: was tricked into selling his state so again, this just
Speaker 4: one hundred dollars months before the British alter intelligence startup
Speaker 4: hit a one billion dollar valuation. Now, the co founder
Speaker 4: said he sold his fifteen percent stake in the company
Speaker 4: to another co founder, claiming he was led to believe
Speaker 4: that the company was essentially worthless. Meanwhile, every in Sunvalley
Speaker 4: Our own ed la Lowe has been catching up with
Speaker 4: twenty three and Me CEO and Jetsky to talk about
Speaker 4: everything from DNAD coding, to the future of health to
Speaker 4: the human genome. He also asked her about the integration
Speaker 4: of Lemonade Health after its acquisition in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 4: and about the synergies between the two companies.
Speaker 12: Say here, listen, I have fourteen million people who have
Speaker 12: twenty three and Me, and if they have questions and
Speaker 12: they want better information about how to integrate this into
Speaker 12: their actual health care and stay healthy. We have access
Speaker 12: now to physicians who are specifically trained on genomic medicine
Speaker 12: and specifically preventative genomic medicine about how to take that
Speaker 12: result in your higher risk for chronic kidney disease, a
Speaker 12: genetic variant, about a medication and you're suffering from depression,
Speaker 12: what's the right medication for you? All of that and
Speaker 12: I now have a clinical team who knows how to
Speaker 12: do that. And the brilliance of Lemonade is that has
Speaker 12: a pharmacy so specifically on areas like mental health where
Speaker 12: people really are struggling and finding the right kind of
Speaker 12: medication to manage it. I have a clinical team now
Speaker 12: that understands genomics, They understand pharmacogenomics, the right you know,
Speaker 12: your your genetic variant and the medication that might be
Speaker 12: best for you to start on.
Speaker 5: As a piece of business, at a basic level, is
Speaker 5: it making money for twenty three and.
Speaker 3: Me, yeah, Lemonade.
Speaker 12: Lemonade when we bought it is largely focused on more
Speaker 12: of the you know, consumer areas like hair loss, a
Speaker 12: rectile dysfunction. So that's a core business and that is
Speaker 12: an excise It exists, and it's an exciting business and
Speaker 12: it's something that we see it tapped into the fact
Speaker 12: like very you know, very similar with twenty three meters
Speaker 12: is that there's a consumer component of healthcare. You see
Speaker 12: this right now with all the GLP ones and weight loss.
Speaker 12: People want to be more and more in control of
Speaker 12: their health. So whether it's about something like a rectile
Speaker 12: dysfunction and weight loss or hair loss, or it's about
Speaker 12: you know, how do you actually stay healthier longer. There's
Speaker 12: a great synergy between those two so that business continues
Speaker 12: to do well and continue to thrive. And now we're
Speaker 12: going to be adding on really, you know, fourteen million
Speaker 12: customers from twenty three meters, how do they get access
Speaker 12: to the Lemonade services as well as Lemonade clinicians and services.
Speaker 13: How are they better integrating genomics and is there anything
Speaker 13: that you think you could go out and buy or
Speaker 13: acquire that will further sort of increase the value proposition
Speaker 13: or just give twenty three and meters customers access to
Speaker 13: more ways to use the test that they took.
Speaker 12: Well, the exciting aspect for me is post pandemic like
Speaker 12: so many things have come yes out of that, but
Speaker 12: people are used to tell amedicine and they frankly are
Speaker 12: more and more used to like, you're on your own
Speaker 12: on health, Like it's really people struggle at understanding payment,
Speaker 12: struggle at finding doctor's appointments. So more and more people
Speaker 12: are on their own. So there's this huge opportunity for
Speaker 12: twenty three and meters to more and more offer a
Speaker 12: you know, vertically integrated system of like, how do I
Speaker 12: actually really help you. I have the pharmacy, I have
Speaker 12: a phenomenal team that knows like can ship right away
Speaker 12: products that you actually want. So how is it that
Speaker 12: we can really be that leader in keeping you healthy
Speaker 12: as long as possible?
Speaker 4: Twenty three and me CEO, and we're just ski there
Speaker 4: with our own ed ludlow. So making news on Tesla
Speaker 4: tapping the ABS market calls asset backed security market for
Speaker 4: the first time since well they exited.
Speaker 3: The world of junk territory.
Speaker 4: Remember back in March, Moody's assigned a investment grade rating
Speaker 4: to Tesla of BAA three, joining the mice of S
Speaker 4: ANDP that had the triple B. So we see it
Speaker 4: at more than two percent as they start to tap
Speaker 4: the debt markets this time and asset fat deal worth
Speaker 4: about a billion. We understand in pre market from New
Speaker 4: York and from out there in some that.
Speaker 3: This blomebag technology.
Speaker 4: The EU in the US this week agreed on a
Speaker 4: new data privacy framework which will allow businesses to transfer
Speaker 4: data from the EU to the United States in a
Speaker 4: secure and compliant way. But look, the new agreement already
Speaker 4: faces the threat of legal challenges from privacy activists who
Speaker 4: are again unhappy with the level of protection offered to
Speaker 4: European citizens. Here to talk about it and more, I'm
Speaker 4: very pleased to say we're joined by DiDia Rangers, European
Speaker 4: Commissioner for Justice.
Speaker 3: Who helped broker this deal.
Speaker 4: And therefore, how confident are you that we're not going
Speaker 4: to see Meta and some of the other key big
Speaker 4: tech companies plunged into this sort of legal vacuum.
Speaker 2: Again, of course, it's very important to have a legal
Speaker 2: certainty for all the participants, so the big companies not
Speaker 2: only in the US and so in Europe, to be
Speaker 2: sure that it's possible to organize so that the flaw
Speaker 2: between the European Union and the US and VI And
Speaker 2: I'm very pleased that now we have had the opportunity
Speaker 2: to take a decision in fact, considering that the protection
Speaker 2: is traveling.
Speaker 3: With the data.
Speaker 2: So we are sure that we have the same kind
Speaker 2: of protection in the US than in Europe about the
Speaker 2: access of the intelligence community to the personal data and
Speaker 2: concerning and sold the possible redress for the European citizens
Speaker 2: if they have some concern about the access of those
Speaker 2: agencies to their data. So it was a long, long
Speaker 2: journey with many negotiations with my counterpart in the US,
Speaker 2: but at the end we have a very good and
Speaker 2: verbist solution. I'm sure to give again a legal certainty
Speaker 2: to all the participants.
Speaker 4: But mister Max Scram's, of course, who's taken down previous
Speaker 4: versions of this, isn't that happy? Are you concerned that
Speaker 4: this ends up in the European top called again?
Speaker 2: Well, it's quite normal that we have such a kind
Speaker 2: of new discussions before the Count of Justice. But I
Speaker 2: proposed first of all to test the new US system
Speaker 2: because we will have now due to the executive order
Speaker 2: signed by the President Biden, we will have now a
Speaker 2: very specific review call and data protection review call, so
Speaker 2: a sort of administrative tribunal in the US, and it
Speaker 2: will be possible free of charge for all the open
Speaker 2: citizens to have an access to such a tribunal, so
Speaker 2: by police first to test the US system before to
Speaker 2: have such a criticism. But if it's needed to go
Speaker 2: to the court, we will do that, and of course
Speaker 2: we will defend the new system, because I'm quite sure
Speaker 2: that it's a very robust new system, very different in
Speaker 2: comparison with the privacy shield of the safe our board
Speaker 2: that we have had before, and it was set so
Speaker 2: by the data protictional authorities in Europe. They have said
Speaker 2: it's very robust, it's a real change. Of course, there
Speaker 2: are some remarks and we have adapt all decisions to
Speaker 2: take into account the remarks of the data protection authorities.
Speaker 2: But now we have a legal certainty, we will have
Speaker 2: the bit to work with all the companies, and of course,
Speaker 2: if it's needed, we'll defend our position before the curd
Speaker 2: of justice.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because just last week, of course, we had
Speaker 4: a new innovative social media offering announced. We had Threads
Speaker 4: come here in the United States and in countless other countries,
Speaker 4: but not in the EU because matter feels that the
Speaker 4: privacy law isn't clear enough for them to be able
Speaker 4: to unleash Threads because of some of the data sharing
Speaker 4: between Threads and Instagram. Do you think ultimately you will
Speaker 4: be able to provide clarity companies that it doesn't stifle
Speaker 4: innovation for your citizens.
Speaker 2: Well, we try to promote innovation, and we have a
Speaker 2: lot of things to do in Europe to promote innovation
Speaker 2: in the digital world and certainly about artificial intelligence, the
Speaker 2: cloud and other kinds of investments. Needed to do more,
Speaker 2: but we run to do that with a human centric approach.
Speaker 2: So we want to do that with a real prediction
Speaker 2: of funamental rights and heal protection of the that's the
Speaker 2: person and that of the city. And I was very
Speaker 2: pleased here in California, I'm in San Francisco to see
Speaker 2: that we have kind of same approach. There's a sort
Speaker 2: of a legislation at the state level to protect the
Speaker 2: personal data and with an indeported authority in charge with that.
Speaker 2: So maybe one day we'll have the same system at
Speaker 2: the federal level in the US with a private cy low,
Speaker 2: but for the moment, it's only at a state level,
Speaker 2: and so it was needed to organize such an agreement
Speaker 2: with the US authorities to be sure that it's possible
Speaker 2: to transfer. But I want to insist on the fact
Speaker 2: you mentioned a new actor. Of course, it's very important
Speaker 2: that all the participants are in full compliance with the GDPR.
Speaker 2: So the legislation in Europe about that protection. It doesn't
Speaker 2: change the GDPR. We have just changed the access of
Speaker 2: the intelligence community and the law enforcem monetorities to the
Speaker 2: data with a better protection and a better full respect
Speaker 2: of the two classical principles of necessity and proportionality. If
Speaker 2: an agency want to take over different kind of personal.
Speaker 4: Commissioner, we've only got thirty seconds. But do you think
Speaker 4: the AI Act will get that balance right between innovation
Speaker 4: and necessary protections.
Speaker 2: But we are working on a risk based approach, and
Speaker 2: everybody's now that there are some risks with the use
Speaker 2: of AI. I'm thinking about generative AI. It's very important
Speaker 2: to give a real transparency. So it's important that the
Speaker 2: users are knowing that it's possible to take AI as
Speaker 2: an instrument to organize a division of a new video
Speaker 2: picture or something like that. But I've seen so different
Speaker 2: kind of risk in some sectors. In transportation system, it's
Speaker 2: very dangerous sometimes to use the new technologies, resolved safety
Speaker 2: rules and again this morning, I've seen a demonstration before
Speaker 2: Air Deparliament in California due to erection against autonomouscals. I've
Speaker 2: tried myself an autonomous car yesterday, but of course we
Speaker 2: need to put into places of regulation about the use
Speaker 2: of such a cal.
Speaker 4: Didea Rangers so well said, we thank you for spending
Speaker 4: some time with US European Commissioner for Justice from New York.
Speaker 4: A supriy bag technology