Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I am, of course
Speaker 2: your host ed zeitron. I remain punished and hated forever.
Speaker 2: Today I'm joined by Mike Masnik. He's the CEO and
Speaker 2: founder of tecta inventor of the Streisan defect, and now
Speaker 2: a board member of the social network Blue Sky. Mike,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, happy to be here.
Speaker 2: So let's start with the streisand defect. Why don't you
Speaker 2: tell the story of how you coined that? That? Just
Speaker 2: walk us through that one, because now that I've heard
Speaker 2: about it, it's all I can think about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, there's sort of there's two
Speaker 3: elements to the founding story, one of which is, you know,
Speaker 3: what caused the term to be that and then me
Speaker 3: eventually naming it. The first was just the you know,
Speaker 3: I was amazed by this story of barber strike and
Speaker 3: suing this guy I always forget his name, Ken something,
Speaker 3: who was doing this project. He was a you know,
Speaker 3: he had been a fairly successful tech guy, but he
Speaker 3: was very interested in conservation, and so he was like
Speaker 3: renting a helicopter every few months and flying along the
Speaker 3: west coast of the United States and taking a photograph
Speaker 3: every you know, every bit of the way, and his
Speaker 3: idea was to continue to do that every few years
Speaker 3: and track the erosion of the West coast of the
Speaker 3: United States. Okay, yeah, kind of an interesting project. You know.
Speaker 3: This is pre Google Maps, pre satellite easy access to
Speaker 3: satellite imagery, all this kind of stuff. And he created
Speaker 3: this website and it's still online and it is incredibly
Speaker 3: old fashioned where you could go picture to picture. You
Speaker 3: couldn't you know, no map like modern mapping software where
Speaker 3: you could slide along. You could go picture to picture
Speaker 3: along the way, and it had this ability for people
Speaker 3: to leave their own annotations. And somebody found Barbara Streisand's
Speaker 3: house in Malibu and commented on it that this is
Speaker 3: Barbara Streisan the Streisand estate, I believe was the phrase
Speaker 3: that was put on it. And somebody, a Streisand lawyer,
Speaker 3: found it and threatened him and then sued him for this.
Speaker 3: And the story that caught my attention at least was
Speaker 3: that what came out in the court documents was before
Speaker 3: the lawsuit that image had been viewed. I believe it
Speaker 3: was eight times, two of which were from my p
Speaker 3: addresses associated with the law firm that was representing Barbara
Speaker 3: streisand so at most six people had seen the photo
Speaker 3: prior to this lawsuit, and in the immediate aftermath, hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands of people saw the photo, and he eventually
Speaker 3: won the lawsuit. In fact, streisand had to pay for
Speaker 3: his legal fees. And I had written about at the
Speaker 3: time and just thought this crazy story. But I kept
Speaker 3: seeing other examples of that kind of thing, where people would,
Speaker 3: you know, try and get something taken down offline and
Speaker 3: the end result would be way more attention paid to it.
Speaker 3: And so there was a story that actually happened. I
Speaker 3: think it was almost two years after the original streisand
Speaker 3: lawsuit and everything, in which there was a site which
Speaker 3: also might still be online and also might be very outdated,
Speaker 3: called urinal dot net to which.
Speaker 2: Is where I get my posts.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, well you know this is the early Internet
Speaker 3: where anyone would pay anything online. Yeah, And they would
Speaker 3: post photos of urinals and they were very specific and
Speaker 3: very clear that urinals only, no people, no body parts,
Speaker 3: just urinals from around the world. And they had pages
Speaker 3: of different ones, and there was some hotel or something
Speaker 3: or I can't remember. Somebody got very mad that a
Speaker 3: urinal from their property was shown and sent a legal
Speaker 3: threat letter, And so I wrote about that, and in
Speaker 3: doing so said, you know, there should be a term
Speaker 3: for this situation where someone, you know, where something is
Speaker 3: not getting attention, and then someone sends a takedown and
Speaker 3: suddenly that draws all this attention to the thing that
Speaker 3: they wanted gone. And then I just jokingly said, why
Speaker 3: don't we call it the Streisand effect and linked back
Speaker 3: to my story about the streisand photo. And then somehow
Speaker 3: I have no idea how that caught on. I didn't
Speaker 3: do much. I mean, I may have mentioned it again
Speaker 3: a few times, but people picked up on it and
Speaker 3: it took on a life of its own, and most
Speaker 3: of which I had nothing to do with.
Speaker 2: And I think it's I think it's ironic that despite
Speaker 2: the term's fame, it has not brought more attention to
Speaker 2: the actual providence of the term. Yeah, but now it has.
Speaker 2: Now we have the better offline, not even remotely exclusive.
Speaker 2: You probably told this story dinner parties for years.
Speaker 3: I may have told it a few times.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a great story though talking about old websites
Speaker 2: tech der so it's come up on thirty years of
Speaker 2: running this site. Yeah, what has changed, because the design hasn't.
Speaker 2: I doesn't say that negatively. I actually love the fact
Speaker 2: that it loads properly. There's not like some insane iframe situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah my phone isn't seven hundred degrees because I'm looking
Speaker 2: at it.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, the well, the site has changed a few times,
Speaker 3: but it has not changed in a long time. So
Speaker 3: this is this is probably the third generation of Tector.
Speaker 3: But but I think it it hasn't really changed much
Speaker 3: since probably two thousand and six, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 3: It's probably the last time we did a major overhaul
Speaker 3: of the look and feel of the site. Yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 3: I wanted to write about the technology industry and what
Speaker 3: was going on, and I was very interested in it.
Speaker 3: And I started when I was in business school. And
Speaker 3: just I originally started writing, I was old school. I
Speaker 3: was writing an email newsletter before email newsletters were crazy
Speaker 3: idea the rage, and then I thought, like, you know, newsletters,
Speaker 3: who reads newsletters? I got to turn this into a website.
Speaker 3: And so I.
Speaker 2: Also, just to we clear, it was entirely email based.
Speaker 3: Oh front yeah, oh when it started, baby, when it
Speaker 3: started in nineteen ninety seven, it was entirely an email thing,
Speaker 3: and then I turned into a website about six months
Speaker 3: after the email, and originally it was just hosting the
Speaker 3: copies of the email newsletter, and then I started to
Speaker 3: build it out. And then what caught my attention in
Speaker 3: early around sometime in nineteen ninety eight, I first saw
Speaker 3: slash dot, and this is before the word blog existed,
Speaker 3: and I was like, Oh, this, this format and this
Speaker 3: setup is really cool. I wonder if I could do
Speaker 3: that and turn the website into that, and so I
Speaker 3: I got I used slash code zero point three. This
Speaker 3: was before they had released an official slash code, but
Speaker 3: they still offered it up.
Speaker 2: Well do you mean a slash code for that?
Speaker 3: Slash code was their software that they used to that
Speaker 3: was slash Dot. It was they they decided to release,
Speaker 3: you know, they uh god, what's his name? Rob Malda
Speaker 3: was the guy who created slash dot, and he, you know,
Speaker 3: released the code he had written written, you know, one
Speaker 3: of the first sort of blogging type software products. And
Speaker 3: it was very messy and it took me and less me,
Speaker 3: but more a friend of mine who was willing to
Speaker 3: get in and deal with the mess of code, which
Speaker 3: was not easy. It took us two or three months
Speaker 3: to figure out how to actually get it just set up.
Speaker 3: And then suddenly like I could blog, and suddenly I
Speaker 3: could write easily every day, rather than what I was
Speaker 3: doing originally, which was like hand coding HTML files and
Speaker 3: FTPing them.
Speaker 2: To This was before you could just spin up these
Speaker 2: blogs like on and.
Speaker 3: Like none of that stuff existed. Again, the word blog
Speaker 3: didn't even exist.
Speaker 2: Where did you host it?
Speaker 3: So I'm I'm not going to say, actually I had
Speaker 3: found I had found a hosting company, and I still
Speaker 3: do some work with that hosting company, and we used
Speaker 3: to we used to advertise. I mean it is, it
Speaker 3: can be found if people are looking. But because we
Speaker 3: we occasionally and we're no longer Tector is no longer
Speaker 3: hosted with them, but we still host some other stuff
Speaker 3: with them because they've been amazing partners. And I just
Speaker 3: found them completely randomly through probably searching Yahoo and found
Speaker 3: a random, little tiny hosting company. But because we sometimes
Speaker 3: receive very angry legal threats and sometimes those legal threats
Speaker 3: try and go upstream are our partner hosting company was
Speaker 3: receiving too many legal threats and said, hey, could you
Speaker 3: not mention that you host with could you could you
Speaker 3: Now that's not I mean it's not, but I mean
Speaker 3: and they're and they're like great, great guys, a very
Speaker 3: small company, a tiny, tiny company.
Speaker 2: Not so you should work with like for the for
Speaker 2: the smaller ones. I used to work with a very
Speaker 2: small domain hosting company then got bought by a big
Speaker 2: one and then it shied almost immediately. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to name them as their remarkable too, and.
Speaker 3: So yeah, but this was not you know this, they
Speaker 3: they were great in fact, like you know, as I said, like,
Speaker 3: we still use them for certain projects and I trust
Speaker 3: those guys to be absolutely amazing. But but yeah, so
Speaker 3: we just found a small hosting company and they were
Speaker 3: the original host of Tector for a very long time.
Speaker 3: And so but yeah, and and and eventually the word
Speaker 3: blog came about afterwards, and I resisted calling Tector to
Speaker 3: blog for a really long time and then eventually kind
Speaker 3: of realized, like, you know it is, did you finish
Speaker 3: business school? I did finish business school. I have an
Speaker 3: m b A, and I so I because I started
Speaker 3: when I was in business school. I got my MBA,
Speaker 3: I moved out to California and I started working for Well.
Speaker 3: I interned at Intel and did my big tech at
Speaker 3: the time company experience for a little bit. I went
Speaker 3: to an e commerce startup that was very big for
Speaker 3: about a week and a half and I joined like
Speaker 3: a week after that. And so it got to ride
Speaker 3: the the e commerce startup down a very big slope downward,
Speaker 3: constantly downward, for about it a year during the this
Speaker 3: was pre the burst of the dot com bubble. So
Speaker 3: what yeah is I was there from ninety eight to
Speaker 3: ninety nine.
Speaker 2: Oh prime, the good years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, except except for us, right, So, I mean part
Speaker 3: of the issue was we saw one of our competitors,
Speaker 3: you know, go public based on you know, I don't know,
Speaker 3: you know, nonsense and a power right yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 3: was pretty and and so you know, we decided that
Speaker 3: we had to go public too, and we had bankers,
Speaker 3: like we had bankers and consultants and all this nonsense,
Speaker 3: and and they looked at what we had and they said,
Speaker 3: you know, you can't go public, like that's how bad
Speaker 3: are Our situation was everybody was going public with zero
Speaker 3: revenue and we couldn't. We had problems.
Speaker 2: I might say that. So after that, did you go
Speaker 2: pro with with Tecta? Did Yeah?
Speaker 3: So basically, so I quit. There was a couple of
Speaker 3: reasons why. I don't need to go into all the
Speaker 3: history there, but I I eventually, you know, did a
Speaker 3: did a nice little quitting and and I sort of
Speaker 3: cast around and I sort of was thinking of doing
Speaker 3: another startup myself, and then like a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: people are like, but the whole time, even when I
Speaker 3: was at this company, you know, I was working on
Speaker 3: Tector on the side, and it was just sort of like,
Speaker 3: especially as everything was going terrible at that company, it
Speaker 3: was kind of my release where I can write about
Speaker 3: all the shit that's going down.
Speaker 2: It's quite literally what I did in the start of
Speaker 2: my newsletter was because I was depressed due to professional
Speaker 2: personal things. I was like, I need to do something else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally, and so like that's what I was doing.
Speaker 3: And then and then I was like casting about for
Speaker 3: an idea. I was working with some friends and I
Speaker 3: was like, maybe we should do a startup, and we
Speaker 3: were talking about different ideas, and then a couple of
Speaker 3: people were like, dude, you seem to really like doing
Speaker 3: this writing thing, and like Tector does you know? It
Speaker 3: seems good and like maybe you could turn that into
Speaker 3: a company and so, you know, so, yeah, so a
Speaker 3: few months later sort of said okay, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 3: going to commit to this full time.
Speaker 2: And was it just you for a while or how long?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, I mean the history is like there was
Speaker 3: there was someone else there in the very early years
Speaker 3: who sort of was helping me out and we were
Speaker 3: trying to get it. He was not full time, and
Speaker 3: we're trying to get him to the point that it
Speaker 3: was full time, and that didn't that never worked out.
Speaker 3: And then but soon after that brought on basically, you know,
Speaker 3: basically a small group of people who were you know,
Speaker 3: we referred to as co founders now and and sort
Speaker 3: of helped me out, helping helping me sort of build
Speaker 3: it out. And how many people if you go it now,
Speaker 3: we are very small. We are now for four.
Speaker 2: People cool and one of those is called Boat as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, body his lesson. Sorry, Car is going
Speaker 3: to kick my.
Speaker 2: Tweets.
Speaker 3: He is used to it. But yeah, so Carl, Carl
Speaker 3: has been writing for us for for a long time.
Speaker 3: I had him, I had him right for us at
Speaker 3: one point. I think he did me a favor. I mean,
Speaker 3: where I either it was I can't remember if either
Speaker 3: I got married or I had paternity leave and I
Speaker 3: needed someone to help write, and and he came in
Speaker 3: for a couple of weeks and then yeah, later on
Speaker 3: when when we were able to bring him on.
Speaker 2: So, how are you feeling about the tech media, Because
Speaker 2: I say this with the reason I brought you on
Speaker 2: is to also publicly say you're fucking awesome and tech
Speaker 2: voks right, And I've been reading it for my entire career,
Speaker 2: and it feels like one of the only outlets that
Speaker 2: has not changed tonally. Yeah, like you've kept you've been consistently.
Speaker 2: I think you're one of the other people who gets
Speaker 2: called like acerbic like I do, which I always get
Speaker 2: pissed off with, which I guess doesn't help.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's kind of weird, like I actually don't care too
Speaker 3: much what people think about me or saying so so
Speaker 3: like none of that has ever concerned me that much.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you know, I don't know. Caustic, I think
Speaker 3: is a term that's been used.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it doesn't feel like you're fighty. It feels
Speaker 2: like you just are pissed off that people aren't more
Speaker 2: consistent and honest and upfront with stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's just like, you know, I've I have opinions,
Speaker 3: and this is a chance to express that. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to hold back. And you know, it's like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, I feel like a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean obviously, like if you're working for like a
Speaker 3: big media company, they're you know, there are limits put
Speaker 3: on kind of what you can say. But also it
Speaker 3: feels like a lot of people who sort of get
Speaker 3: into writing also you know, they kind of do it
Speaker 3: to then like move into a role like they want
Speaker 3: to get hired by I don't know, CNN, NBC or
Speaker 3: something like that, And that was like never my goal.
Speaker 3: So like, right, I never had this concern that like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, like well if I write this, nobody's ever
Speaker 3: going to hire me because I'm not trying to get
Speaker 3: hired that way. So so that was never, you know,
Speaker 3: never a concern of mine.
Speaker 2: But it feels totally like you at least had a
Speaker 2: mission though. Yeah, I've always been trying to get high
Speaker 2: old of what that is in the best way.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and you know, I don't know, I mean
Speaker 3: I have at some point I need to dig up
Speaker 3: and find like and I know, I like sent this
Speaker 3: to Carl and other people brought on new writers. I
Speaker 3: had sort of like an editorial like here's our mission, right,
Speaker 3: here's what we're trying to do. But it's it's like
Speaker 3: twenty years old at this point, and I haven't looked
Speaker 3: at it, and I don't even know where I would
Speaker 3: find it. But like, you know, my take on it
Speaker 3: was always like the key thing for me with Tector
Speaker 3: is I actually and this is where like potentially I
Speaker 3: don't know if I disagree with you or you might
Speaker 3: disagree with me, Whereas like I am weirdly optimistic about technology.
Speaker 3: I actually do think technology is like a generally good
Speaker 3: driving force, and like.
Speaker 2: I actually fully agree, by the way, okay.
Speaker 3: And like innovation has all this amazing opportunity that I
Speaker 3: would love to see realized, and so like my focus
Speaker 3: is on like anything that gets in the way of it,
Speaker 3: and and so like, and I want to be really
Speaker 3: careful here because like there's like the Mark Andresen view,
Speaker 3: like who says something that sounds kind of like what
Speaker 3: I'm saying here, right, But.
Speaker 2: He's he's not an optimist, he mentions Nick Land. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's not the dark and enlightenment guys are not optimists.
Speaker 3: Right, And and so his whole thing is like, you know,
Speaker 3: this accelerationist approach to like technology and innovation, and and
Speaker 3: my take on it is more like I want to
Speaker 3: see all of these, like all the good stuff that
Speaker 3: technology enables to become reality. I would like to see
Speaker 3: it sooner because I only have so long to live,
Speaker 3: and the more of it that I can see, and
Speaker 3: the more of it that will be available to my
Speaker 3: kids and you know, everybody else I think would be good.
Speaker 3: But that you know, there are ways to do that right,
Speaker 3: and there are ways to do it better and to
Speaker 3: take a long term view of how how do we
Speaker 3: actually make the world better with these kinds of innovations.
Speaker 3: And so I think, you know, poorly executed innovation is
Speaker 3: bad and leads to problems. And so where I get
Speaker 3: upset is sort of and you know what sets me
Speaker 3: off on various rants is like, you know, efforts that
Speaker 3: get in the way of good innovation. Right, So it's
Speaker 3: not like like the Andresan viewpoint is like anything that
Speaker 3: gets in the way of any innovation is a problem.
Speaker 2: And you know, and also I don't the things. I
Speaker 2: fully agree with you. I regularly get told a senek,
Speaker 2: I'm a pessimist. I don't like this stuff. I love
Speaker 2: the computer. Yeah, it's the only reason I'm a person.
Speaker 2: Like like I'm like the drill crying tweet, but about
Speaker 2: the internet, like my job, my friend, love ones, lovers
Speaker 2: crying and Internet and it's now get the fuck out
Speaker 2: of my office, which is the quote from the growth tweet.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying this to Mike, but it's like, I
Speaker 2: agree with you. It's these things may seem like we're
Speaker 2: deeply interrogating them and attacking them, but it's like these
Speaker 2: things are in the way of cool stuff happening. Yes, Centralization, monopolization,
Speaker 2: shitty regulations that stop actual innovation happens are the things
Speaker 2: that will stop cool stuff happening. Yes, And I think
Speaker 2: too regularly people kind of conflate that with hating. But
Speaker 2: it's like you should hate the stuff that gets in
Speaker 2: the way of the cool stuff exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, then yes, that is That is very much
Speaker 3: my view of these things. I mean, I would love
Speaker 3: to see more cool stuff than so stuff that gets
Speaker 3: in the way of that I find problematic.
Speaker 2: So my many complainers and haters. They hate me so much.
Speaker 2: They they tell me I never like anything, But I
Speaker 2: want to talk about Blue Sky. Okay, you joined the
Speaker 2: board of yees. So how did that actually come abound?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So, I mean, you know, I don't know how
Speaker 3: much you know about the history of Blue Sky itself.
Speaker 2: I think it would be good to tell listeners.
Speaker 3: Sure so, and I have some association with it, though
Speaker 3: it's sort of semi random. Which was that, you know,
Speaker 3: when this goes back to, like I think it was
Speaker 3: like I had looked this up fairly recently, so that
Speaker 3: don't hold me to the dates, but I think it
Speaker 3: was around like twenty fourteen or so. It was when
Speaker 3: there was suddenly some controversies around the way that Twitter
Speaker 3: and Reddit were hand certain content moderation controversies, and there
Speaker 3: was you know, basically like really bad shitty content on
Speaker 3: both of those platforms, and there was a big debate
Speaker 3: over whether or not those companies should step in and
Speaker 3: take down that content, and whether or not that was
Speaker 3: an attack on free speech or blah blah blah. You know,
Speaker 3: we've heard all the debates, but that was really the
Speaker 3: first one that really boiled through. Was around twenty fourteen
Speaker 3: and I among the other things that I believe in,
Speaker 3: you know, strongly, is like free speech is a very
Speaker 3: important concept to me. And again, like I always feel like,
Speaker 3: now I need to caveat that because lots of most
Speaker 3: people who say that they support free speech, don't.
Speaker 2: They they support saying the N word. Yeah, that is
Speaker 2: the big goal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they it's yeah, it's it's very frustrating to me.
Speaker 3: I support actual free speech, yes, and that includes, you know,
Speaker 3: the right of private platforms to say we don't want
Speaker 3: to associate with you. That is a right of association,
Speaker 3: which is considered a one part of the right of
Speaker 3: free speech. But at the same time, I do appreciate again,
Speaker 3: like the power of the Internet itself to be this
Speaker 3: platform of enabling more good speech. Some bad speech, obviously,
Speaker 3: but also an awful lot of really really good speech.
Speaker 3: And I am very very concerned about an overreaction where
Speaker 3: in an attempt to stop the bad speech, which again
Speaker 3: is very much there, that we throw out a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of really good and important speech.
Speaker 2: Can you give an example, just because because this is
Speaker 2: a thorny topic, I think it's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, I mean obviously, like you know me too,
Speaker 3: Black lives matter. You know, these kinds of things came
Speaker 3: about because of the Internet. The Arab Spring is another
Speaker 3: one where the you know, the Internet was incredibly powerful
Speaker 3: in having these voices be able to speak out and
Speaker 3: to you know, form groups and organize and talk to
Speaker 3: each other. That really was not particularly possible prior to
Speaker 3: the Internet being there and enabling that kind of speech.
Speaker 3: And I worry when we talk about, you know, stopping
Speaker 3: certain kinds of speech, that that would enable people to
Speaker 3: stop these these other kinds of of good speech, and
Speaker 3: so that that was sort of like larger issue I'm
Speaker 3: sort of thinking about, like, how do we protect you know,
Speaker 3: the ability for people to speak out, to speak truth
Speaker 3: to power in certain cases where it is really important.
Speaker 3: Also protect the right of private you know, uh services
Speaker 3: to say I don't want to associate with this content,
Speaker 3: not be forced to host you know, Nazi content for example,
Speaker 3: or or hateful content. How do we sort of balance
Speaker 3: those things. And because I'm old and because I'm from
Speaker 3: you know, I existed on the Internet in the nineties
Speaker 3: and I was like, I felt like the Internet was
Speaker 3: kind of different back then, and so I just started
Speaker 3: thinking through these things and I said, well, you know, wait,
Speaker 3: how did we get to this world in which you know,
Speaker 3: I grew up pre World Wide Web on Usenet and
Speaker 3: I r C all of these.
Speaker 2: You know, I was a polarist man. If you remember polarist,
Speaker 2: I don't don't think I ow. It was a great
Speaker 2: side client had colors and shit.
Speaker 3: It was okay, I don't even remember what I RC client.
Speaker 3: I use it, but you know, and I used Gopher
Speaker 3: before the web existed, Like, I don't know if you
Speaker 3: remember Gopher.
Speaker 2: I don't know Gopher. I'm looking it up now.
Speaker 3: Okay. It was sort of like a text based uh
Speaker 3: you know, menu systems like my protocol Jesus, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: so I would get the weather every morning by gophering
Speaker 3: to a server finding out what the weather was. So,
Speaker 3: you know, so I was like, we had all these
Speaker 3: things and they were all protocol based and then anyone
Speaker 3: could build, right, So you used a different IRC client
Speaker 3: than I did. Anyone could build on it because it
Speaker 3: was all a protocol and anyone could build. And I
Speaker 3: was like, wait, you know, the world changed somewhere in
Speaker 3: the last twenty years, and now we have all these
Speaker 3: services that are wholly owned corporations, and they obviously have
Speaker 3: their own interests, and that doesn't seem like a great world.
Speaker 3: So I wrote a blog post it just kind of suggested, like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, why aren't these things built on protocols, why
Speaker 3: are they all wholly owned corporations, Because that's where it
Speaker 3: seems like a whole bunch of the problems come in.
Speaker 2: And then I had these interoperable portals.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, I mean it's like because like you know, once,
Speaker 3: you know, I was kind of thinking, I was thinking
Speaker 3: back to usenet honestly, where it's like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: you had bad, terrible people on unet. Yeah yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean you know, depending on where you go, it's kind
Speaker 3: of risky. But you also had like kill files, and
Speaker 3: you had different use net servers that would ban different
Speaker 3: groups different uh, I.
Speaker 2: Mean some of the early gaming groups I was in, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like I was playing Uo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there there was all all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 3: and but like you had methods of dealing with it.
Speaker 3: But it was like community based. It wasn't like it
Speaker 3: wasn't like, you know, the president of usenet has to
Speaker 3: decide which which things are allowed in which or not,
Speaker 3: But like as a community we can sort of figure
Speaker 3: out or through individuals, like with kill files and stuff
Speaker 3: like you could say like I'm I don't look, I
Speaker 3: never want to hear from it again, right, so like
Speaker 3: I'm gonna make sure make sure that I'd never have
Speaker 3: to deal with him, and so, you know, and I
Speaker 3: was like that was that was like a better world.
Speaker 3: Whereas now, like everything because like Reddit is fully in
Speaker 3: control of Reddit and Twitter is fully in control of Twitter.
Speaker 3: We're in this world where we are totally dependent on
Speaker 3: the decisions that they make, and you know, like, yes,
Speaker 3: there is like one decider and so like in some
Speaker 3: cases maybe that is useful, but you know, on the
Speaker 3: who whole, it feels like a less great world because
Speaker 3: the incentives that they have are also you know, not
Speaker 3: always aligned with the users and certainly not aligned with like,
Speaker 3: you know, what might be best for different us. It's
Speaker 3: always going to be a single view and usually it's
Speaker 3: like what is going to be the biggest profit, you know,
Speaker 3: for for us? And so so I wrote this piece
Speaker 3: sort of like theorizing like what would it look like
Speaker 3: if we had a more interoperable, you know, protocol based
Speaker 3: world for these kinds of services, And then I'd written
Speaker 3: a few more things about it, and at some point
Speaker 3: in like twenty eighteen, the Night Institute of Columbia asked
Speaker 3: if I would write a paper kind of outlining that idea,
Speaker 3: and that made me really sit down and sort of
Speaker 3: think through it more systematically, and I wrote this paper
Speaker 3: called Protocols Not Platforms, which I was, you know, went
Speaker 3: back and forth with them on editing. There were two
Speaker 3: folks at the Night Institute who were really really good,
Speaker 3: like amazing editors, like really challenged everything I wrote, and
Speaker 3: it was just like, but how would this work? Like
Speaker 3: why would that? You know? And really made me, you know,
Speaker 3: work hard at getting that paper right and we published.
Speaker 3: They published that in twenty nineteen, and it got a
Speaker 3: little bit of attention early on, and then it sort
Speaker 3: of died out. And then Jack Dorsey found the paper
Speaker 3: and I kind of think I know how he did it,
Speaker 3: I'm not entirely sure, and he reached out and he
Speaker 3: was just like, hey, I read your paper, and I
Speaker 3: think we want to do that with Twitter and so
Speaker 3: to take one step back, like my thought and writing
Speaker 3: that paper to create that world. So I was sort
Speaker 3: of arguing that this world is a better world where.
Speaker 2: Every major platform would have a protocol that could be
Speaker 2: connected to the other.
Speaker 3: Or yeah, I mean there are a few ways that it
Speaker 3: could be done. But basically I was like, what can
Speaker 3: we do to like take away the power of like
Speaker 3: a Mark Zuckerberg or you know, a Sergey Brin or
Speaker 3: whatever to like control a huge portion of the Internet
Speaker 3: was kind of the underlying thinking. But still have the
Speaker 3: benefits of these services, right, Like, like there are good things,
Speaker 3: but you know, the problem comes in when you know one,
Speaker 3: you're sort of stuck there, right. You know, if if
Speaker 3: you you know, like the example and I use this
Speaker 3: in the paper and it comes up a lot is
Speaker 3: like the email example, where you know, compared to like Facebook, right,
Speaker 3: if I leave Facebook, then I mostly have But you know,
Speaker 3: when I leave Facebook, that means my family that uses Facebook,
Speaker 3: my cousins, my aunts and uncles that all stay in
Speaker 3: touch through Facebook, I no longer know what's going on
Speaker 3: with them because I don't. I don't want to deal
Speaker 3: with Facebook anymore. But email, Like, if I don't like
Speaker 3: my email provider, I can find an new email provider
Speaker 3: and I don't lose touch with everyone that I email
Speaker 3: because I can just import my address book over. I said,
Speaker 3: you know, why why can't we make all of the
Speaker 3: Internet services that we like more like the email example
Speaker 3: and less like the Facebook example, where where if I leave,
Speaker 3: I can still stay in touch with people.
Speaker 2: Where's the incentive for the platforms to do this?
Speaker 3: So yeah, so if you read the Protocol's not Platforms paper,
Speaker 3: you see, like I, I try to come up with
Speaker 3: a bunch of incentives to effectively convince the companies to
Speaker 3: recognize that there are potential benefits. Yes, obviously they are
Speaker 3: losing control, but my main pitch to them, and this
Speaker 3: is the one that Jack seemed to buy, was you
Speaker 3: also don't get blamed for everything anymore. And so whether
Speaker 3: or not that is a good thing or not, it's
Speaker 3: just like cause I you know.
Speaker 2: And then just so I'm clear, the downside is for
Speaker 2: them would be that they can no longer trap you there.
Speaker 2: But in return, you're not totally at faults.
Speaker 3: Well basically, you know, it's like when you know. So
Speaker 3: this is not again not a perfect analogy, but it's
Speaker 3: like you think of email, email and spam, right, so
Speaker 3: everyone's sort of like trying to deal with spam, but
Speaker 3: at no point are they like calling the CEO of
Speaker 3: Email to testify before Congress because they're spam everywhere, Right,
Speaker 3: you sort of recognize that it is a collective action issue,
Speaker 3: and it's a collective problem that everyone has to try
Speaker 3: to work on in different ways, and you had early
Speaker 3: on at least you had different people sort of creating
Speaker 3: different spam fighting tools, and the discussion was over that,
Speaker 3: like how do how do we better handle those things
Speaker 3: rather than you know, you, mister CEO of email, have
Speaker 3: to fix this.
Speaker 2: I think we're I'm a little confused. Yeah, but forgive
Speaker 2: me for this is that how does this deal with
Speaker 2: like trolls and spam and all that if they have
Speaker 2: less responsibility than who does? So if there was a
Speaker 2: is this is this, I guess federated? Is this what
Speaker 2: you're suggesting like because or is this forget forget my ignorance?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, it's it's not. It's it's a little
Speaker 3: bit complex to to wrap your head around. It's complex
Speaker 3: for me to wrap my head around it. And so
Speaker 3: it's fine, it's important. It's good to ask questions. No,
Speaker 3: So my thinking was that what happens is if it's
Speaker 3: and I didn't think of it as federated as in
Speaker 3: like mastodon, right, I mean, we can get into like
Speaker 3: specific debates about the actual like technical infrastructure and how
Speaker 3: it's built. I don't think that's as important. The idea
Speaker 3: more was that if it is not wholly controlled by
Speaker 3: one company, those companies can still you know, have a
Speaker 3: responsibility in terms of keeping their part of it clean
Speaker 3: in order to keep users. Because now, the way I
Speaker 3: looked at it was, you know, if you know, so,
Speaker 3: imagine a world in which there are lots of Twitters,
Speaker 3: and this is kind of the way I was thinking
Speaker 3: that that could all interoperate and communicate across each other.
Speaker 3: If Jack Dorsey, you know at that time, still running Twitter,
Speaker 3: does something really stupid or enables too many Nazis to
Speaker 3: be too Nazi full, then people will leave right right
Speaker 3: because there's now easy exit under this kind of system,
Speaker 3: and therefore he has incentives to actually keep things clean. Now,
Speaker 3: this is the part that some people get upset about,
Speaker 3: which is like, if it is a protocol, then you
Speaker 3: could still have you know, Nazi Twitter, which is kind
Speaker 3: of what we have now.
Speaker 2: You can just say Twitter now.
Speaker 3: Yeah or x right so, and you know, but in
Speaker 3: that world, I think they can be much more isolated.
Speaker 3: Now this is partly theoretical in my belief.
Speaker 2: But also you would be building a site on top
Speaker 2: of a protocol. It would use the protocol. You would
Speaker 2: be visiting a site.
Speaker 3: Right, so you you would still be using a site,
Speaker 3: and then but you would have one you would have
Speaker 3: more control yourself because you could bring in your own
Speaker 3: algorithms or other people's algorithms or so you know, other
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: And use that to called and off the Nazis rather than.
Speaker 3: To courting off the Nazis. But again, like you know,
Speaker 3: there are different layers here in terms of the stack,
Speaker 3: in terms of who's doing which part of it. But
Speaker 3: you could still have room for a company like a
Speaker 3: Twitter or now a blue Sky that has some moderation features,
Speaker 3: and if people really dislike the way that they're moderating,
Speaker 3: they could build their own from.
Speaker 2: The same protocol with the same us as with the
Speaker 2: same accounts, right exactly. And that's what blue Sky is
Speaker 2: really doing. Like blue Sky is on top of a
Speaker 2: protocle or is it a protocol itself.
Speaker 3: No, So blue Sky is on top of a protocol,
Speaker 3: the AT protocol or AT protocol. And so you know
Speaker 3: what happened was that Jack decided that Twitter would do this.
Speaker 3: He was somewhat convinced by my paper and decided that
Speaker 3: he would he would hire a small team of engineers,
Speaker 3: give them some money, and have them go and build
Speaker 3: a protocol, with the idea being that Twitter would adopt
Speaker 3: that protocol eventually. And so that was the plan that
Speaker 3: he sort of set in motion in late twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: and he, you know, he announced it on Twitter and
Speaker 3: he gave a shout out to my paper, but I
Speaker 3: had no official anything. I had spoken to him after
Speaker 3: he read the paper. I had a couple conversations with him,
Speaker 3: and I got an alert the night before he sent
Speaker 3: out that threat saying he was going to do it.
Speaker 3: He was going to announce it, but I had no
Speaker 3: no role or any any association with it. And then
Speaker 3: then well COVID happened, which I think probably threw off timelines.
Speaker 3: But Twitter folks got a bunch of people who were
Speaker 3: interested in decentralized social media together in an online sort
Speaker 3: of you know, chat space using Matrix, which is another
Speaker 3: decentralized protocol, and and you know, they basically talked about
Speaker 3: ideas for a really long time, and it took Twitter
Speaker 3: really very way too long, you know, basically another year
Speaker 3: and a half until they finally decided that they were
Speaker 3: going to hire somebody to lead the Blue Sky project,
Speaker 3: and then that took a while and they eventually hired
Speaker 3: Jay Graber. But again, Jay very smartly said, this needs
Speaker 3: to be separate. It can't be a part of Twitter.
Speaker 3: It needs to be independent from Twitter, because otherwise someone
Speaker 3: could buy it and then destroy it. Yeah, we wouldn't
Speaker 3: want that to happen. Yeah. So, so pretty prescient on
Speaker 3: her partner.
Speaker 2: And so, how did you end up on the bullet then?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So I was also in the thread and like one
Speaker 2: hundred people mentioned me. So, I mean I have no qualifications.
Speaker 2: I post a lot, I don't really know stuff. So
Speaker 2: I mean it's unfair, you got it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I mean basically, I mean I had known Jay.
Speaker 3: I'd known Jane from before all of this. Actually I
Speaker 3: had met with her kind of around when the protocols
Speaker 3: and platforms.
Speaker 2: This is Jay Graver Graver who's the CEO.
Speaker 3: I had met with her kind of when the paper
Speaker 3: came out through a mutual friend. She had read the
Speaker 3: paper and liked it, and we had lunch and just
Speaker 3: very quickly, like I realized, like she she internalizes, she
Speaker 3: understood it better than I did, and she understood my
Speaker 3: paper better than I did and I wrote it and
Speaker 3: that was like, I was like, wow, this.
Speaker 2: Is that that rocks as far as the CEO CEO
Speaker 2: of a website actually knowing how it works. I'm not
Speaker 2: even being sarcastic here, no, I mean it.
Speaker 3: Was it was. It was really eye opening. And this
Speaker 3: is obviously before you know, blue Sky existed. And then
Speaker 3: so she you know, you know, once Twitter announced blue Sky,
Speaker 3: she she had made it clear to them that she
Speaker 3: really wanted to run it, and Jack and Twitter like
Speaker 3: really took a lot of time to actually realize that,
Speaker 3: like she should run it, and like they interviewed a
Speaker 3: lot of other people. They actually again I had no
Speaker 3: official association. I never got paid, I never you know,
Speaker 3: had no contract or anything. But they actually had me
Speaker 3: interview people who might run the Blue Sky project at
Speaker 3: one point.
Speaker 2: That's really cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. I was just kind of they just
Speaker 3: asked me, and I said for sure, and then I
Speaker 3: gave them feedback and I recommended that they hired j
Speaker 3: though there were really good other people.
Speaker 2: And actually there was a board of people setting up
Speaker 2: Blue Sky just so the people know the organization. So
Speaker 2: there was a board of people it.
Speaker 3: Was yeah, it was mostly Twitter people. There were a
Speaker 3: few outsiders, but it was mostly like senior executives at Twitter,
Speaker 3: and they were still.
Speaker 2: At Twitter at the time, and then they left or.
Speaker 3: And no, oh oh. In terms of the people they interviewed, yeah,
Speaker 3: none of the people they interviewed were Twitter. Sorry. All
Speaker 3: the people that they interviewed, I'm sorry. The people who
Speaker 3: were doing like the interviewing were Twitter people and a
Speaker 3: couple outside people like me and a few others.
Speaker 2: That's really cool though.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then and then they they and and there
Speaker 3: were it was actually some really impressive candidates and like
Speaker 3: I was, like, I was kind of blown away by
Speaker 3: like how many smart people were thinking through how do
Speaker 3: you actually build a decentralized social media protocol. And then
Speaker 3: eventually they hired Jay and she start and she set
Speaker 3: it up as an independent operation and then built out
Speaker 3: the company. And the originally had so the board was herself,
Speaker 3: Jeremy Miller, who is still on the board and was
Speaker 3: has a lot of experience in decentralized protocols and standards.
Speaker 3: And then Jack was the third board member and in
Speaker 3: the midst of all of this as well, then Elon
Speaker 3: came along obviously, I think your listeners know what of him, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And and everything zip To founder.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's funny if you go way back in the
Speaker 3: tector at archives, I have a post about zip To
Speaker 3: where I called him Elton Musk at the time, which
Speaker 3: I've never corrected, and so uh uh so, yeah, Jack
Speaker 3: was on board. But somewhere around this time when Elon
Speaker 3: took over, Jack discovered Noster, which is this other decentralized
Speaker 3: social media protocol, and he became really really interested in it.
Speaker 3: And this is actually about the last time I spoke
Speaker 3: with Jack where he was like, oh, you should check
Speaker 3: out Noster, like it is everything that your paper, you
Speaker 3: know that your paper described And I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: that's interesting. And I was like, but what about blue Sky,
Speaker 3: Like aren't you you're on the board And he's like yeah,
Speaker 3: He's like they're they're too slow. Noster is going to
Speaker 3: move much faster.
Speaker 2: Okay, buddy, Yeah, how's how's Noster doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, like I checked it out. I actually do
Speaker 3: think there are some really cool things about Noster, and
Speaker 3: like technically it's it's a really interesting setup that He's
Speaker 3: right that it does enable like a lot of like,
Speaker 3: really some really cool things can be done by a NOSTER.
Speaker 3: And it is interesting because both the technological underpinnings of
Speaker 3: both Noster and the the AT protocol, which is what
Speaker 3: Blue Sky is based on, both really come out of
Speaker 3: this other decentralized protocol called Secure scuttle Butt, which we're
Speaker 3: not going to get into and what that is and
Speaker 3: what happened to it. But so both of them take
Speaker 3: some of the technological thinkings from the same same core idea,
Speaker 3: and that's actually kind of interesting, and you know, if
Speaker 3: you get into the technical weeds, it's it's kind of
Speaker 3: neat how there are some similarities there. But he got
Speaker 3: really focused on it mainly because it was like so
Speaker 3: lightweight and so simple that people could build on it
Speaker 3: very quickly, whereas Blue Sky was taking more time. But
Speaker 3: part of the reason why Blue Sky was taking more time,
Speaker 3: and part of the reason why I've always been really
Speaker 3: impressed by Jay is that her approach to all of
Speaker 3: this is like people, like, some people care about decentralization,
Speaker 3: most people don't, And if you're going to build a
Speaker 3: thing that works, like the fact that it is a
Speaker 3: decentralized protocol underneath, shouldn't it shouldn't matter to most users.
Speaker 3: They need to build it just a good service upfront,
Speaker 3: like that's the most important thing. And so you know,
Speaker 3: Jay's very very conscientious of that and thoughtful of that.
Speaker 3: And so anyway, so that all happened, Jack was still
Speaker 3: on the board, and then at some point he was
Speaker 3: doing an interview and was sort of confronted about something
Speaker 3: and he was like, oh, I'm quitting the board, and
Speaker 3: so he quit the board, and suddenly there was an
Speaker 3: empty seat on the on the Blue Sky board. And
Speaker 3: and then yes, lots of names were thrown out in
Speaker 3: in big threads on Blue Sky of potential replacement. But
Speaker 3: I mean, I I have I had been in sort
Speaker 3: of regular contact with Jay, you know, ever since Blue
Speaker 3: Sky started, and there were different points where different things
Speaker 3: popped up, and she had reached out to me for
Speaker 3: thoughts and advice, and I'd had a few phone calls
Speaker 3: with her, you know, over the time, and so basically,
Speaker 3: like I think she had reached out because she wanted
Speaker 3: some advice on something. And again this is all totally informal.
Speaker 3: I had no official relationship or anything. And we started
Speaker 3: talking and I tossed out the idea as like I know,
Speaker 3: Jack left. If you want me to help find you
Speaker 3: someone else, I am willing to like evaluate other people,
Speaker 3: but also like, if you're interested in potentially having me
Speaker 3: be that person, I'm also interested in that. And so
Speaker 3: that's basically what I said. And we continue that conversation
Speaker 3: over the course of about two months, and I spoke
Speaker 3: to Jeremy who's the other board member, and some other
Speaker 3: folks as well, and then eventually, you know, they offered
Speaker 3: me that spot cool. That's the basis story.
Speaker 2: To wrap us up, I will ask you the question
Speaker 2: I love to ask people, which is why should we
Speaker 2: have hope right now? Because there's so much there's so
Speaker 2: much depression. I'm not talking about politics. I'm just talking
Speaker 2: about within the tech industry. There's so much shit, there's
Speaker 2: so much grim shit. What gives you hope right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean honestly, I mean stuff like Blue Sky,
Speaker 3: And I will broaden that to say, like all of
Speaker 3: the attempts at building new decentralized systems I find super
Speaker 3: exciting and encouraging because it's showing that we can build
Speaker 3: that world where it's like we can look at you know,
Speaker 3: the the success of social media as a concept is
Speaker 3: really interesting and it's cool, like it has allowed so
Speaker 3: many people to connect, and yes, there are all sorts
Speaker 3: of downsides, like again of course not denying what we
Speaker 3: know are the downsides of social media, but like the
Speaker 3: number of important friendships and you know, business contacts and
Speaker 3: relationships that I've built through social media, and this concept
Speaker 3: of people being able to communicate with each other so
Speaker 3: easily is such a powerful thing that I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people take for granted. And yes, what happened
Speaker 3: was that that all sort of got locked in these
Speaker 3: and shitified silos from these you know, giant companies run
Speaker 3: by often terrible people and you know, with very misguided incentives.
Speaker 3: The thing that I am really enthusiastic about with the
Speaker 3: centralized social media is that we have a chance to
Speaker 3: do it again, and we have a chance to hopefully
Speaker 3: do it better. And this is something that I didn't
Speaker 3: I didn't really talk about when I in my thinking
Speaker 3: on the paper, and this is something that comes up
Speaker 3: and I think it is worth addressing. Is that some
Speaker 3: people say, well, Blue Sky is a company, it is
Speaker 3: venture funded, you know, it's it's got to go down
Speaker 3: that same route of intiitification, and that is a fear,
Speaker 3: and I sort of view part of my role on
Speaker 3: the board as being like stopping the intification and sort
Speaker 3: of representing the best, you know, the best position of
Speaker 3: the community. But you know, one of the things again,
Speaker 3: another thing that has impressed me about Blue Sky and
Speaker 3: Jay is that they have within their mission this idea
Speaker 3: that the future company is a potential adversary. Right, everybody
Speaker 3: knows what happened with Twitter, right, and so they are
Speaker 3: building the protocol to be resistant to that. That doesn't
Speaker 3: mean it won't happen, but it is being done in
Speaker 3: a way that is much more difficult for them to initify.
Speaker 3: And again, like I go back to the email example,
Speaker 3: where where you know, most people have a Gmail account, Like,
Speaker 3: lots of people use Gmail, and some people can argue
Speaker 3: like Gmail's not great, but I don't think Gmail has
Speaker 3: been as in shitified as other systems because the excentive
Speaker 3: built because it's built on basic email protocols SMTP and whatnot.
Speaker 3: And so if they make it really horrible, if they
Speaker 3: were really like there were concerns you know early on,
Speaker 3: oh Google's going to spy on all your email and
Speaker 3: do advertising off of it and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: They you know, they sometimes make experiments in that way
Speaker 3: and then they get you know, smacked down and stuff,
Speaker 3: because as soon as they go down this path of
Speaker 3: really making it horrible, it's so much, you know, it
Speaker 3: just opens up the opportunity for somebody to step in
Speaker 3: and say, well, it's easy, like you can switch, you
Speaker 3: don't lose contact with anyone. Right, It's hard to leave Facebook,
Speaker 3: it's easy. It's easier to leave Gmail. And so the
Speaker 3: incentive structure then is for Google not to fuck up Gmail.
Speaker 3: That's not to say, you know, Gmail has its problems,
Speaker 3: but it's I think it's less less and shitified than
Speaker 3: other services, whereas and Blue Sky and the way they're
Speaker 3: designing Blue Sky and at protocol it is designed to
Speaker 3: make it, you know, really difficult for future Blue Sky
Speaker 3: to and shittify the service because if they do, all
Speaker 3: of the pieces are set up that somebody else can
Speaker 3: come in and create you know, new Blue Sky, green Sky,
Speaker 3: whatever whatever you want to call it, that everybody can
Speaker 3: just shift to with the push of a button, and
Speaker 3: Blue Sky loses everything that they have as as a company.
Speaker 3: And so the real challenge now is like, can we
Speaker 3: build you know, a sustainable business and service on that
Speaker 3: without making it awful for the users and the community
Speaker 3: on that service. And but we've built in this sort
Speaker 3: of commitment mechanism which is if if you know, we
Speaker 3: try and do things that is exploiting our users, which
Speaker 3: is like that's where the incentification curve starts. You know,
Speaker 3: you reach this point where instead of providing value, we
Speaker 3: now have to extract.
Speaker 2: You've trapped them. Now they cannot be right.
Speaker 3: And so you know, with Blue Sky, the whole point
Speaker 3: is like we're setting it up as you know, not
Speaker 3: me them, but you know, I'm I'm on the board
Speaker 3: and I'm watching they're setting it up in a way
Speaker 3: that they're setting a trap for themselves. That says, if
Speaker 3: if we try and start extracting value in a way
Speaker 3: that is awful to people, they can leave and they
Speaker 3: can destroy our business. And therefore we can't do that.
Speaker 3: We have to build a service that is good for
Speaker 3: the community and that you know, provides value for the
Speaker 3: community rather than is extracting value from the community. And
Speaker 3: so that you know, who knows if it'll work. It
Speaker 3: is you know, this is a lot of this is theoretical,
Speaker 3: but you know, I think everything that they've done so
Speaker 3: far has been in that, right. You know, they make mistakes,
Speaker 3: everybody makes mistakes, but I think they're moving in the
Speaker 3: right direction with it. And that has me really really optimistic,
Speaker 3: because wouldn't it be great if we could have like
Speaker 3: all of these benefits that we're talking about without you know,
Speaker 3: without the awfulness, and without you know, it all being
Speaker 3: dependent on some billionaire who's you know, trying to buy
Speaker 3: up an island in Hawaii or whatever.
Speaker 2: Okay, so maybe I have one more question. Okay, what
Speaker 2: is the mechanism to stop blue sky and shit fying? Then?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's basically the fact that anyone can
Speaker 3: can every every part of Blue Sky itself can be
Speaker 3: recreated elsewhere while still allowing you to communicate with people
Speaker 3: on Blue Sky. Right, So it is possible to entirely
Speaker 3: remove yourself from Blue Sky and still communicate with anyone
Speaker 3: else on Blue Sky.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 3: And so that's how it should be, yes, Right, And
Speaker 3: so you know, if Blue Sky in shitifies and does
Speaker 3: bad stuff, then somebody else is going to come along
Speaker 3: and say, like, I don't like this, right, you know,
Speaker 3: So just for example, right, you know, if they decide
Speaker 3: to you know, start inserting you know, terrible ads everywhere
Speaker 3: or whatever. Then it's like somebody comes along and says, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to build the infrastructure that is blue Sky
Speaker 3: without the ads.
Speaker 2: You know, and they would have access to all the
Speaker 2: posts or the users, and.
Speaker 3: Blue Sky can't do anything to stop that.
Speaker 2: That's really cool. That is a better future. But blue
Speaker 2: Sky can keep users by not being ship exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: And so you know, there is the challenge of like,
Speaker 3: you know, it still is a company. It is a
Speaker 3: public benefit company, so we are allowed as a board like, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, the fiduciary duty is to a wider set
Speaker 3: of stakeholders, including the community, not just the investors. And
Speaker 3: we can do that legally because of the public benefit corporation.
Speaker 3: But like we have this technical infrastructure that says, you know,
Speaker 3: we basically shoot ourselves in the foot if we make
Speaker 3: it shipped for for the community. And and you know,
Speaker 3: now the trick is like can can you build a
Speaker 3: real sustainable business on top of that by actually providing value?
Speaker 3: And that's you know, that's hopefully the next stage of
Speaker 3: what the company is working on.
Speaker 2: Mike, thank you so much for joining me. Where can
Speaker 2: people find you?
Speaker 3: So well? Thanks for having me this is a This
Speaker 3: was a really fun conversation. I wasn't sure where it
Speaker 3: was going to go, but that was that was good.
Speaker 3: That's the Better of Line experience. And yeah, so I
Speaker 3: am obviously on blue Sky m masnik at It's at
Speaker 3: mmasnik dot b b sky dot social as my cout there.
Speaker 3: It's easy to find me on blue Sky, obviously at
Speaker 3: techtr and those those are the main things. So if
Speaker 3: you want to read my articles, read them on tector.
Speaker 3: If you want to see me, you know, ranting about
Speaker 3: this or that at any point, find me on blue Sky.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, and you will now get the soon
Speaker 2: to be updated Better Offline links following this. Thank you
Speaker 2: for listening. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The
Speaker 2: editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski.
Speaker 2: You can check out more of his music and audio
Speaker 2: projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T T O
Speaker 2: S O W s ki dot com. You can email
Speaker 2: me at easy at Better offline dot com, or visit
Speaker 2: Better Offline dot com to find more podcast links and
Speaker 2: of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go
Speaker 2: to chat dot Where's youreed dot ad to visit the
Speaker 2: Discord and go to our slash Better Offline to check
Speaker 2: out our reddit. Thank you so much for listening.
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