Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm your host, Joshua Tapolski,
Speaker 1: and I guess say we have a real treat today.
Speaker 1: I'm excited we managed to get a guest on that
Speaker 1: frankly was a pretty you know, pretty hard booking to
Speaker 1: lock in and not surprising due to all the all
Speaker 1: the excitement swirling around this person. But you know, I
Speaker 1: do have a little bit of an inn and so
Speaker 1: you know, I'm excited to say that today on the
Speaker 1: show we have the former editor in chief of Threads,
Speaker 1: Katie Natopoulos, who also is a former senior reporter at
Speaker 1: BuzzFeed and a general like internet personality, I think, a
Speaker 1: well known and well loved and also probably hated internet personality.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to talk to her. I should also say that,
Speaker 1: you know, she is my sister in law, but that's
Speaker 1: just an icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: because Katie, long before she was my sister in law,
Speaker 1: was an iconic figure online and so I'm excited to
Speaker 1: get her back on the show and talk about her
Speaker 1: latest adventure, which involves a wild ride with the one
Speaker 1: and only Mark Zuckerberg. So let's just not waste any
Speaker 1: more time let's just get into this thing. What is
Speaker 1: that coffee over there, Katie? You drinking a coffee late
Speaker 1: in the day.
Speaker 2: That's actually it's a beer.
Speaker 3: Is it beer? You hiding it? You're concealing your beer?
Speaker 2: Well? Does that keep it cold?
Speaker 4: Yeah, because otherwise it was like gonna get like warm
Speaker 4: in the can because it.
Speaker 1: Reads, Yeah, it reads this concealment. But I do understand.
Speaker 1: I understand what you're saying.
Speaker 4: For Father's Day, we got like Thermoses to drink beer
Speaker 4: in the park, which sounds also now sad, but to
Speaker 4: conceal it well, so there's like every Sunday there's like
Speaker 4: a concert in the park here, and like everyone brings
Speaker 4: like beer and wine, but like this way it can
Speaker 4: be like it has like a lid so it doesn't spill.
Speaker 4: So it's mye So now I found it very convenient,
Speaker 4: keeps things frosty.
Speaker 3: That's great, Katie.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that I could get you back about to
Speaker 1: keep back on the show. Even though we are you know, related,
Speaker 1: and you know, in a family together, it's hard to connect.
Speaker 1: You were just saying, you're just saying before we started
Speaker 1: that you guys hadn't been to a swim we have
Speaker 1: a pool, and you hadn't been over to swim, and
Speaker 1: that is that is true, not all summer long, and
Speaker 1: we're in We're in mid August right now.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 4: I've been I've been waiting for an invite, but my
Speaker 4: million box is strangely empty.
Speaker 3: Ow.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's a standing invite, you know, basically.
Speaker 1: But I guess you're right. We could be more proactive
Speaker 1: about it. So on that issue, I guess I am
Speaker 1: fully to blame. But but you've had a busy you
Speaker 1: have personally had a very busy summer, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about it. I don't remember the date exactly,
Speaker 1: but this was the summer of Threads. I think, as
Speaker 1: everybody's been referring to it, it's the uh I.
Speaker 3: Think we've all been talking about Meta introduced.
Speaker 1: It's Twitter competitor threads and you know, too much fanfare.
Speaker 1: It's built a huge following a huge amount of followers
Speaker 1: quickly on threads. Hundreds of millions of people have joined,
Speaker 1: at least one hundred million.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: And you were, you know, early on, you were really
Speaker 1: setting the tone on threads as Meta's Threads editor in chief.
Speaker 3: Yeah, first off, could you talk about.
Speaker 1: The experience of what that was like building, you know,
Speaker 1: working with the team with Adam and Zuck to build
Speaker 1: the product, and just talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: creation of Threads.
Speaker 2: So, Josh, first of all, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 4: I'm your sister in law and I've been a tech
Speaker 4: reporter for a long time, previously at BuzzFeed News, which
Speaker 4: unfortunately shut down at the end.
Speaker 2: Of April, and I was so lucky to get.
Speaker 4: A wonderful opportunity to become the editor in chief of
Speaker 4: the new Threads app which launched in the beginning of July.
Speaker 2: And you know.
Speaker 4: I was just so excited to really get to work
Speaker 4: with the phenomenal team over at Meta.
Speaker 2: And just seeing them work was like wow, you know,
Speaker 2: it was like it was like watching the Miracle on
Speaker 2: ice hockey team.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, wait, hold on, wait, who is who is
Speaker 1: the miracle?
Speaker 4: Ey?
Speaker 1: Is that like a show where like people are doing
Speaker 1: like they're like dancing or whatever.
Speaker 3: What is miracle? What is the miracle on eyes?
Speaker 4: If you could just sure, I believe it was the
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty USA hockey team in the Olympics that, against
Speaker 4: all odds.
Speaker 3: Beat Russia. Okay, oh, okay, in.
Speaker 2: Eighty four, but I think it was eighty.
Speaker 1: So not like a Harlem globe trotter situation, like that's
Speaker 1: in my head that's what I went to immediately, but
Speaker 1: it's actual thing that happened in history. Okay, that sounds
Speaker 1: like Vega.
Speaker 4: There's actually I believe there's even a move, a fairly
Speaker 4: recent movie about it called Miracle, But it was I
Speaker 4: think the idea was that they were sort of like
Speaker 4: the underdogs and the people, which is strange. It's like,
Speaker 4: why would people think that the US was not good
Speaker 4: at hockey? I men, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know the history. I a lot of ice rush,
Speaker 2: fairly famous sports thing.
Speaker 4: And also someone's going to like respond to this podcast
Speaker 4: and be like two Olympics, idiot.
Speaker 3: So listen.
Speaker 1: So you were there at the beginning, you were working
Speaker 1: with the team, and then of course the app launches.
Speaker 3: Everybody's freaking out about it.
Speaker 1: You know, Elon Musk is going crazy threatening lawsuits, and
Speaker 1: Azuka is cracking hilarious. Joe suddenly, Mark Zuckerberg, you're at
Speaker 1: the time your boss, your by at least your boss's
Speaker 1: boss is suddenly.
Speaker 2: That's what I call him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's suddenly become a little bit of a folk hero.
Speaker 1: The he's the David that's laid Goliath. He's actually like Goliath.
Speaker 1: He's like actually like the Goliath that slaid David or whatever.
Speaker 1: I guess anyhow, you know, he's like, it's like the
Speaker 1: bad guy won in a way, but also yeah, they're
Speaker 1: both bad guys. So like, you know, again, as I
Speaker 1: as I put on Threads in the early days, I
Speaker 1: posted the Alien versus Predator poster from the when the
Speaker 1: film came out, and it's of course has the famous
Speaker 1: tagline whoever wins, we lose, And I said, this is
Speaker 1: the only way to think about the thread situation.
Speaker 4: Right, It's like, ultimately you're you're rooting for a guy
Speaker 4: who should be tried at the Hague.
Speaker 1: They say they say the enemy of my enemy is
Speaker 1: my friend or something like that. I think that's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, all these guys are shitheads who suck.
Speaker 1: But okay, so getting back to it, I mean very
Speaker 1: successful and accomplished shitheads who suck. So you're the Threads
Speaker 1: editor in chief. A couple of questions, One is, can
Speaker 1: you tell me a little bit about what the job entailed?
Speaker 1: In that role, give me a little like flavor of
Speaker 1: what was going on right around launch as you were,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of really putting the pieces together.
Speaker 4: Sure, so I think that, you know, really a big
Speaker 4: important thing was I would consider my role there. It's
Speaker 4: like a vibe some some milia, you know, a vibe curator. Really,
Speaker 4: you know, it was it was a lot of like
Speaker 4: welcoming celebs on. It was like, hey, guys, we've got
Speaker 4: Eva Longoria.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing. We've got George t Que. He's just
Speaker 2: threatened it up.
Speaker 1: You're almost like a You're almost like a you wanted
Speaker 1: to bring the the quality posters to the forefront.
Speaker 3: You were sort of a facilitator in a way exactly.
Speaker 2: And so when someone like Gary Vee shows up on Threads.
Speaker 1: And there, I'll never forget that day, you know, when
Speaker 1: he was finally on and I'm like, finally culture has
Speaker 1: arrived on Threads and yeah, it was it was amazing.
Speaker 1: But then listen, it was all going great. The early
Speaker 1: days were fantastic, mm hmm, but then there was a
Speaker 1: little bump in the road. Can you talk about the
Speaker 1: situation that that went down and which ultimately led to
Speaker 1: your spoiler alert but your dismissal as editor in chief,
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about what happened?
Speaker 4: Yeah, unfortunately, this this all unfolded in my first day
Speaker 4: officially on the job.
Speaker 2: But you know, that's I was.
Speaker 4: I was just posting, because you don't say tweet on threads.
Speaker 4: Its posting lots of threads about how I'm the new
Speaker 4: editor in chief and this is my new job and
Speaker 4: I'm so happy and excited and a lot of like,
Speaker 4: you know, s full of thread you know, emoji totally
Speaker 4: r you know, muscle.
Speaker 2: Arm emoji, rocket ship emoji.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought your energy was amazing because it was really
Speaker 1: like the kindest, most welcoming, like most pro threads energy
Speaker 1: that anybody could put out there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and and then two things sort of went wrong
Speaker 4: for me, so, you know.
Speaker 2: And of course I was, you know, just doing my job.
Speaker 4: But a journalist from the Intercept, Ken Clippenstein, I think, so.
Speaker 1: That sounds right. He's got a great, great newsletter, got
Speaker 1: a great newsletter.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: He he posted a picture of Mark Zuckerberg shaking hands
Speaker 4: with NBS. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia committed horrible uh.
Speaker 2: Acts, And so I said something like, you know, every time.
Speaker 4: We should just continually keep posting this picture every like
Speaker 4: in response to Mark, you know, Zuckerberg every time he posts.
Speaker 3: Ken's trying to keep mind it right.
Speaker 4: And I think a little bit you know, pointing out hey,
Speaker 4: because for a moment, you know, one sort of uncanny
Speaker 4: thing about the threads is that all these Facebook executives
Speaker 4: who like never tweeted or like posting it up, you know.
Speaker 1: Trapping Itch in particular, is was incredibly active on threads.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, remains incredibly active.
Speaker 4: So you know, I think that I think that a
Speaker 4: little bit people were like excited by that. It was
Speaker 4: sort of funny, you know, he was doing a little
Speaker 4: like you know, riffing on Elon and uh, you know,
Speaker 4: seeming like a cool guy. And you know, I think
Speaker 4: Ken wanted to remind people that you know, he's complicit
Speaker 4: and some very bad things. I responded to you know,
Speaker 4: of course, you know, as editor in chief, I responded
Speaker 4: to him, you know, waving hands emogie. Hey, Ken, I
Speaker 4: know that you know you didn't know this, but actually
Speaker 4: bullying is not allowed on this platform, and so bullying
Speaker 4: you ever post this picture again, We're going to have
Speaker 4: to deactivate your account.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Threads is a product that's kind of build out
Speaker 1: of Instagram, and you have to remember that Instagram has
Speaker 1: a very strict moderation policy, and so I think you
Speaker 1: have to remind people like Threads, it's not the same
Speaker 1: it's not the same situation as Twitter.
Speaker 3: Not It's not just like any kind of bullying is.
Speaker 4: Going to be I can't just bully billionaires. We don't
Speaker 4: toperate that here on Threads. Bullying is bullying, that's right.
Speaker 4: You can't not bully Mark Zuckerberg. And so I think
Speaker 4: a lot of people, you know, were they're a little
Speaker 4: surprised by that as official Threads policy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: And then someone else had responded to me, asking are
Speaker 4: you going to ban the Nazis from Threads? And you know,
Speaker 4: I took a page from my boss, Mark Zuckerberg, who
Speaker 4: you know, in the past has said that he would
Speaker 4: be happy to allow Holocaust deniers because it's simply a
Speaker 4: different viewpoint.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, Fame.
Speaker 1: I think we should remember famously, Mark Zuckerberg, who is
Speaker 1: a Jew, famously told I think Kara Swisher, I want
Speaker 1: to say on a podcast that he was like, yeah, like,
Speaker 1: if there's Holocaust and ires on the platform, Like that's
Speaker 1: okay because they just are sharing.
Speaker 3: They don't have to view.
Speaker 1: Them, right.
Speaker 2: I think they're wrong, but I'm not going to ban them.
Speaker 3: I mean it was fair.
Speaker 1: You know, you got to see it, got to see
Speaker 1: from every side. Like there's the side it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: this thing happened. It like a horrible genocidal atrocity happened.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the like the fact base, science based side,
Speaker 1: you know. But then on the other hand, there's like
Speaker 1: an opinion like it didn't happen, which I think is
Speaker 1: also like a valid argument.
Speaker 3: Right right.
Speaker 4: And I think at the time his reasoning here was
Speaker 4: I think it was in the discussion was sort of
Speaker 4: about misinformation, and he was he was His argument was
Speaker 4: that people who are Holocaust deniers aren't intentionally trying to
Speaker 4: misinform other people when they say the Holocaust int happened.
Speaker 4: They genuinely believe this edroneously, but they they're just they
Speaker 4: just happened to be mistaken. They you know, kind of
Speaker 4: like how I thought the Miracle on Ice happened in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty but it was really nineteen.
Speaker 3: Eighty two, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, who amongst us hasn't hasn't believed
Speaker 1: it something that was incorrect and then shared it widely
Speaker 1: on a social network, Right.
Speaker 4: So, I mean I do believe that the stance on
Speaker 4: Holocaust deniers has changed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they reversed a sand.
Speaker 2: Since that interview.
Speaker 3: I thought it was.
Speaker 1: It turns out if you say something totally stupid, embarrassing.
Speaker 2: It's off you for like months about it.
Speaker 3: It's obviously wrong, you will reverse your stance on it.
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, I do think that their their policies
Speaker 4: on that have have evolved since that interview.
Speaker 2: But anyhow, but.
Speaker 3: Getting back to the point, you were taking a cue
Speaker 3: from mar.
Speaker 4: So, someone said, will you will you ban the Nazis?
Speaker 4: And I said, here on Threads, you know, we welcome
Speaker 4: diversity of viewpoint and we welcome everyone. This is an
Speaker 4: inclusive space, and that includes being welcoming and inclusive of
Speaker 4: people who choose to live a Nazi lifestyle.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people got upset from that.
Speaker 1: Well, I think, as I think in a situation where
Speaker 1: you're representing you know, the Threads app really, when you
Speaker 1: think about it, like as the editor in chief, in
Speaker 1: some ways you're the most vocal representative of the of
Speaker 1: that space. I mean, I get it, you know, I
Speaker 1: think saying like you know, we we we the Nazis
Speaker 1: here is a little controversial, I guess. I mean Mark,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like it would have been that big
Speaker 1: of a deal to Mark.
Speaker 2: But but then what happened, uh so, you know, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, well, a couple of interesting things happened, so that
Speaker 4: particular post sort of it went like viral. But I
Speaker 4: can't really tell because Threads doesn't show you like retweet count.
Speaker 2: Or like, it doesn't really allow you to see, and you.
Speaker 4: Can't search, so it's really actually hard to see how
Speaker 4: far something is traveling. Like I could see that a
Speaker 4: lot of people were commenting on it. I could tell
Speaker 4: that a significantly above average number of people were commenting on.
Speaker 3: And this was at this point. At this point, had
Speaker 3: the app hit one hundred million users at this point,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: No, I think that's a good day or two later.
Speaker 4: But I could also see that people back on Twitter
Speaker 4: were sharing screenshots of it.
Speaker 2: I could see the people.
Speaker 1: We're talking about, sorry, just to be clear, so people
Speaker 1: off platform or screenshot and and they were sharing on
Speaker 1: other platforms, Like the editor in chief of Threads just
Speaker 1: said this, right, So that's incredible.
Speaker 3: God, Katie, it was a lot of.
Speaker 4: Like, you know, hey, I'm I was considering checking out
Speaker 4: Threads because this was you know, it was like the
Speaker 4: first day or something.
Speaker 2: A lot of people were like should I try it?
Speaker 2: Should I go for it?
Speaker 4: And then people would be like sharing the screenshop being like,
Speaker 4: no way, I'm not going to join this app because
Speaker 4: look what the editor in chief says, right yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel like at.
Speaker 4: This point, Josh, I feel like I have to spoil
Speaker 4: the bit, and for anyone who's listened this long time, really,
Speaker 4: really I need to make it clear that.
Speaker 2: Like I was joking, I was not the editor in
Speaker 2: chief of Threads.
Speaker 1: Okay, fine, all right, fine, let's let's spoil the bit.
Speaker 1: Katie was pretending to be the role that doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: the editor in chief of Threads. And then I mean,
Speaker 1: I actually, I mean I was hoping we continue the
Speaker 1: bit through to the point where you were called into
Speaker 1: I believe you said you were called into Mark's office,
Speaker 1: but maybe it was Adam.
Speaker 4: I mean, I you know, I think that I just
Speaker 4: I feel bad for any listener who's like tuning in,
Speaker 4: being like, why is just talking to this Like.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think I think my audience is savvy
Speaker 1: enough to see through the veil of humor that we've
Speaker 1: dropped on them.
Speaker 3: But so yeah, to be clear, you were doing a bit.
Speaker 4: So it was a bit like it was basically like
Speaker 4: the first day I like sign up for an account
Speaker 4: and I was like, you know what am I gonna
Speaker 4: do here? And I was like, immediately my brain went
Speaker 4: to like I've got a fuck around, like I've got
Speaker 4: a troll lightly.
Speaker 1: On you, because I think people have to understand that
Speaker 1: you are a professional poster and like I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't realize like what that means, and
Speaker 1: what it means is when you get on a platform,
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna post, and uh, you went right
Speaker 1: to the to the heart of the matter. You went
Speaker 1: right to the heart of posting, which was pretending to
Speaker 1: be an employee, pretending to be an employee of threads.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And and because you have like a you know, you
Speaker 1: have a following, and people like started to following you immediately.
Speaker 3: It was like, I mean, everybody.
Speaker 1: Who was following you, who knows you and your thing,
Speaker 1: was like this is the greatest bit of all time.
Speaker 1: Like everyone was like playing along with the bit and
Speaker 1: uh and so yeah, I mean it quickly spiraled out
Speaker 1: of control.
Speaker 3: From what I can tell.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I feel a little bad because I
Speaker 4: I think I probably overestimated the quote.
Speaker 2: Everyone who knows me like knew it was a bit,
Speaker 2: because I think that like people who know.
Speaker 4: Me well knew it was a bit people who maybe
Speaker 4: were like vague acquaintances. And it keep in mind, Threads
Speaker 4: hooks into your Instagram friend graph, so it was like,
Speaker 4: you know, my friends on there were like people who
Speaker 4: you know, like like real normies, like not people who
Speaker 4: were maybe familiar with my work or.
Speaker 3: Your Twitter graph and your Instagram graph are a bit different.
Speaker 4: Right, And also like there's just plenty of people who
Speaker 4: like maybe they followed me on Twitter or something, but
Speaker 4: they don't like know me. And you know, like if
Speaker 4: I'm saying something that sounds like a conceivable truth and
Speaker 4: then I'm like, haha, you suckers. I was lying, Like
Speaker 4: I don't know, It's not their fault for not knowing that, right, Like,
Speaker 4: I think what was funny about it to me, at least,
Speaker 4: was that the idea of an editor in chief of
Speaker 4: Threads was both ridiculous but plausible.
Speaker 1: Plausible and I think widely accepted by many people.
Speaker 4: To be honest, there was this sort of I mean,
Speaker 4: like there is not an editor in chief of Threads,
Speaker 4: but there was a time, you know, in like twenty
Speaker 4: fifteen or something where it seems like every app had
Speaker 4: like an editor in chief, you know, or like there
Speaker 4: was always some sort of like former journalist person, and
Speaker 4: that was for a while a very lucrative thing to do,
Speaker 4: to like be a journalist and then go be the
Speaker 4: editor of like Snapchat or something.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and so that moment is sort of over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, By the way, I went back while you were
Speaker 1: telling the story and just went to look at some
Speaker 1: of the posts you're doing. What strikes me is particularly,
Speaker 1: like I think resonant about them is that you are
Speaker 1: basically doing like what Linda Yakarino's been doing on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Like it's like a person who is so on the
Speaker 1: fucking payroll, like so obviously embarrassingly on the payroll for
Speaker 1: like kind of a shithead, but has to be like
Speaker 1: everything's going great, right, It's like if this is fine
Speaker 1: type of tweeting or posting or whatever. If you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, just got out of a big meeting with
Speaker 1: Zuck and the Meta team. We're absolutely loving all the
Speaker 1: great posts you're all doing here. Keep up the great
Speaker 1: work everyone, artie this and make sure you follow me.
Speaker 1: And then you're like, you know, Keith Edwards, Threads hit
Speaker 1: thirty million users in ten hours, My god, and you
Speaker 1: are like quote quote posting this and you're.
Speaker 3: Like, amazing, great work everyone on my threads. Teap.
Speaker 1: Then you've got like the arm, the bodybuilding arm in
Speaker 1: the rocket red z emoji. It's like it's just very
Speaker 1: it's just very like you know in a way, it's
Speaker 1: like you know, blink twice if you know you need
Speaker 1: help or whatever, like yuh.
Speaker 4: I feel like my one of my favorite ones is
Speaker 4: I think I said something like I just want to
Speaker 4: like say, how many amazing posts are especially from brands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, actually I just went past that. One
Speaker 1: thing I'm loving is how funny brands are on here.
Speaker 1: You guys are killing it. That's a post that you
Speaker 1: did on threads. I like this one too. This one
Speaker 1: is amazing. It's a repost of mister Beast, who's like
Speaker 1: to celebrate threads launching. I'm gonna give this tesla to
Speaker 1: a random follower. And you're like woo hoo. The Threads
Speaker 1: team and I worked hard with Tesla and mister Beast
Speaker 1: to make this awesome contest happen. Thank you to Elon
Speaker 1: for donating the car and your support of the silly
Speaker 1: little app.
Speaker 3: Then it's the Threads emoji, a thread emoji, the.
Speaker 1: Rocket ship emoji, the strong arm emoji, and the car emoji.
Speaker 1: It's just so fucking perfectly bland cheerleading of like the
Speaker 1: product that it is. I would say, like largely all that,
Speaker 1: like Linda Yakarino has done on Twitter. It's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that she has any power, but she definitely
Speaker 1: goes on Twitter and is like, We're so excited about
Speaker 1: what we're building here, and it's like, are you She's
Speaker 1: just cashy the check anyhow. But yeah, so so, but
Speaker 1: then you went through a whole thing where you got fired,
Speaker 1: Like you went through a whole bit.
Speaker 4: So the Nazi thing, in particular, I could tell was
Speaker 4: like getting a little out of hand.
Speaker 2: And I say out of hand.
Speaker 4: It was like all my friends and people who sort
Speaker 4: of like knew me knew this was very clearly a joke,
Speaker 4: and that the joke is about how Facebook and platforms
Speaker 4: have kind of actually.
Speaker 3: Yes, viewed that.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, the joke is the joke is this
Speaker 1: is the answer that they actually fucking give a lot
Speaker 1: of the time when you're like are you going to
Speaker 1: moderate rights Nazis or are you going to moderate like
Speaker 1: hate speech? Are you going to moderate lies? And they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we welcome all viewpoints, and it's like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I could tell it had traveled outside of
Speaker 4: that bubble of people who know me and knew it
Speaker 4: was a joke, and it was onto something bigger where
Speaker 4: people were just generally aghast by it, which you know, again,
Speaker 4: I think is a good thing because I think people
Speaker 4: should repeatedly feel agast by like the poor content moderation
Speaker 4: decisions that are happening on platforms.
Speaker 3: But wait, hold on, hold on a second, Hold on
Speaker 3: a second. Is this real?
Speaker 1: There's a fucking oh, there's like some Economic Times dot
Speaker 1: India Times dot com. Who's Katanatopolas know about? Editor in
Speaker 1: chief of Threads now fired over a controversial post. It's
Speaker 1: just like I think an actual article from some like
Speaker 1: oh it is okay. Taking to Twitter on Friday, July
Speaker 1: said seventh, Katie atopol has announced on Twitter that she
Speaker 1: has now fired as editor in chief of Threads met
Speaker 1: as new social media app there recently wanted, okay, whatever
Speaker 1: this is like one like if you search for Nazi lifestyle,
Speaker 1: hold on, oh this is okay, these are your Nazi
Speaker 1: lifestyle Threads app. That's like the second there's multiple articles.
Speaker 1: There's actually multiple articles written about I.
Speaker 4: Think what happened was that it basically like you know
Speaker 4: how you know the a famous tweet about how like.
Speaker 2: Everyone's goal on Twitter is to not be the person of.
Speaker 4: The day, right, yes, yes, I was the Threads person
Speaker 4: of the day for like a moment, and like, I
Speaker 4: think it got to the point where it's probably somehow
Speaker 4: hit some Google metric of trending, like and so these
Speaker 4: seo like sites that kind of you know, like what's
Speaker 4: the one like breaker or like.
Speaker 3: I don't know, they're all anything.
Speaker 4: That basically is just like sensing whenever there's a blip
Speaker 4: in the like.
Speaker 1: The site Dexero, do you know the same Dexerto?
Speaker 3: I feel like, no, don't worry.
Speaker 4: There's a Katie in the topless one now because of
Speaker 4: this too.
Speaker 1: And who is who is Kaane? The topless troll. Threads
Speaker 1: editor goes viral with controversial posts. I mean they did
Speaker 1: like a full on BuzzFeed style like fucking slide show
Speaker 1: ship on this, Like it's so really.
Speaker 2: Funny because it feels very AI generated too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure that these aren't, to be honest,
Speaker 3: Like it.
Speaker 4: Just attracted enough Google information. I think that the post
Speaker 4: on Threads had traveled enough that people enough people were
Speaker 4: googling who is Katie to topless because they were trying
Speaker 4: to figure out if it was legit, right, I think, right,
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people were like unclear.
Speaker 1: Well, Also, the fact that you had been for a
Speaker 1: long period of time a reporter at BuzzFeed made the
Speaker 1: plausibility of you becoming the editor in chief of Threads
Speaker 1: just absolutely perfect.
Speaker 3: I mean it was like completely acceptable to believe that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like yeah right, like BuzzFeed News shut down
Speaker 1: like she got a new job, is like editor in
Speaker 1: chief of Threads like completely By the way, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm reading a sports keyted dot com some fun. There's
Speaker 1: some these crazy spam, random fucking gout. The internet is
Speaker 1: full of such guardas.
Speaker 2: Oh definitely.
Speaker 4: Well, one thing is a couple of them said that
Speaker 4: incorrectly they thought my account was taken down.
Speaker 2: What ended up happening.
Speaker 3: Yes, they did say that.
Speaker 4: That's right, the Nazi post was taken down, that one
Speaker 4: single post that was the post.
Speaker 1: Were you pretending to be, as a joke, the editor
Speaker 1: in chief of Threads, a role that does not exist.
Speaker 1: Were you were telling a person a thing that you
Speaker 1: had zero actual power to do or implement, which is
Speaker 1: letting people who leave a Nazi lifestyle post on Threads.
Speaker 3: They took that post down just to be clear.
Speaker 2: That that is krreshed.
Speaker 3: So and what was the rationale? Was it impersonation? What
Speaker 3: was the no.
Speaker 4: When you get a post taken down, it doesn't tell you,
Speaker 4: like exactly why, And you know, there's a very clear
Speaker 4: reason for that, because a lot of the time Facebook
Speaker 4: doesn't want you to know exactly its rules, right, Like
Speaker 4: they keep it fuzzy for a reason because as soon
Speaker 4: as people know the exact rules, they're going to gain
Speaker 4: the system.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: So it just said like this was in violation of
Speaker 4: our policies or whatever. My guess would be that it
Speaker 4: would fall under like you're not allowed to like encourage
Speaker 4: or show support of hate groups. To can't say I
Speaker 4: like you can't say I'm not a Nazi, but I support.
Speaker 3: Them, right, sure, yeah, okay, fair.
Speaker 2: So I have a feeling it probably fell under that.
Speaker 4: I mean, I wouldn't be totally surprised if the fact
Speaker 4: that I was also impersonating Threads employee played some context.
Speaker 2: I think there's sort of two versions. One is that
Speaker 2: like people.
Speaker 4: Probably reported it, you know, like people report things race.
Speaker 4: It flagged to some outsource moderator who had to make
Speaker 4: a decision in point five.
Speaker 3: Second, guy in a sweatshop who has to look at.
Speaker 4: The possible this you can't like you're not allowed to
Speaker 4: praise Nazis or show support of them, Like does that
Speaker 4: count as praising Nazis? I don't know, maybe like sure,
Speaker 4: take it down whatever, like but you know, frankly, you
Speaker 4: know what better safe than sorry? Fine, I'm happy with that,
Speaker 4: you know. Or it's possible, I think much less likely that,
Speaker 4: like there was a higher level discussion about whether or
Speaker 4: not to allow that very misleading, an inflammatory post about
Speaker 4: meta itself to continue.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I think in a way it would.
Speaker 3: It exposed.
Speaker 1: First off, was a very funny bit, and everybody who
Speaker 1: does know you thought it was very enjoyable to watch
Speaker 1: it play out. But I think what it exposed is
Speaker 1: like you touched on it already. Is the real and
Speaker 1: sort of absurd reaction that these companies have to things
Speaker 1: that twe a person, a normal person seem obviously like addressable.
Speaker 1: And I think you brought up the thing where Zuckerberg said,
Speaker 1: you know, well it's a different opinion or whatever about
Speaker 1: like holocaust and ires, and I think like there was
Speaker 1: also as a part of that, and it may have
Speaker 1: been that interview, or it may have been a separate
Speaker 1: post that he did on Facebook or something where he
Speaker 1: was like, I don't believe I should be you know,
Speaker 1: the person who decides what speech like should be allowed
Speaker 1: and shouldn't be allowed on this platform or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: like rationale is like, well, it's such a big platform
Speaker 1: and there's so many people on it, Like I can't
Speaker 1: be the one, you know, the guy who decides. And
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you know what the thing is. It's
Speaker 1: a publicly owned company that is a for profit business,
Speaker 1: and like ultimately you actually get to say as the
Speaker 1: CEO what you won't, will and won't allow on the platform.
Speaker 1: And they do it all the time, right, Like there's
Speaker 1: a ton of shit, there's a ton of shit you
Speaker 1: cannot put on Facebook, Like a million different horrible things
Speaker 1: you cannot post on Facebook, and it's like you could
Speaker 1: decide and just have you just have to deal with
Speaker 1: the fact that people will go like, you're not letting
Speaker 1: all the viewpoints on here, but like so fucking what right,
Speaker 1: But they don't want to do that. They want to
Speaker 1: play this like weird middle ground, like for what reason.
Speaker 1: I don't really know. I understand like the concept, but
Speaker 1: it's not hard.
Speaker 4: To be really I think the reason is clear, right
Speaker 4: Like that. Ultimately, Mark Zirgerber doesn't really care about the moderation.
Speaker 4: He cares about getting hauled in in front of Congress
Speaker 4: and having Republicans yolotan because he moderated too much, right, right,
Speaker 4: So this gives him the whole excuse of like we
Speaker 4: created this out outside the Facebook Oversight Committee and basically
Speaker 4: just punt all those hards. He does not do anything
Speaker 4: to not have to be the one to make the
Speaker 4: decision about banning or not banning Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I would love I would love to be in front
Speaker 1: of Congress and have someone be like, you know, question
Speaker 1: the why or why you ban a Nazis thing, you know,
Speaker 1: and just be like, look, dude, you know if somebody's
Speaker 1: clearly posting Nazi shit, like I don't know, seems.
Speaker 3: Pretty straightforward, like if you think otherwise, like I'm all yours.
Speaker 3: I just don't understand the argument.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's never okay, so it's never going
Speaker 2: to be the Nazis.
Speaker 3: No, but you can use the Nazis. You can use
Speaker 3: the Nazis.
Speaker 4: To be fair, Facebook has banned Nazis for a long time, okay,
Speaker 4: and so his Instagram and like, frankly, the question about
Speaker 4: like are you're gonna be Nazis on threads, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know what they've had, Like you're.
Speaker 2: Not allowed to like already ban a Nazi for a
Speaker 2: long time, right, Like the.
Speaker 3: Only place where Nazis aren't banned is Twitter.
Speaker 2: That's the right, or you know, honestly, technically they probably are.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think they are. I don't think they are.
Speaker 4: I don't I have a feeling if you are, like
Speaker 4: literally I'm a Nazi like that stuff, it's probably a no.
Speaker 4: But I think where you get into trouble is all
Speaker 4: these edge cases things like like libs of TikTok is
Speaker 4: the perfect example of something that's this like really frustrating
Speaker 4: edge case for these things where it's like she's constantly
Speaker 4: towing the line of like, oops, I'm going a little
Speaker 4: bit over what you said the rules were, Oops I'm
Speaker 4: not you know, back and forth. And if it wasn't
Speaker 4: someone who had like millions of followers and all of
Speaker 4: a sudden, like a lot of eyes on her, they
Speaker 4: would have banned her a long time ago. But now
Speaker 4: it's like now she's this like nightmare person who's so
Speaker 4: popular that if she gets.
Speaker 2: Banned, and like Josh Hawley's gonna yell and like.
Speaker 4: It's not necessarily just like the Nazis, because I just
Speaker 4: like the reason everyone sort of uses that as an example.
Speaker 4: It's like, of course you bann the Nazis. The question
Speaker 4: is like do you ban the transphobes? Like do you
Speaker 4: ban there's a lot of stuff that doesn't fall under
Speaker 4: h beats that is very objectionable, right or.
Speaker 2: That like they wiggle there.
Speaker 4: They're really right up against that of the line of
Speaker 4: you know, hey, maybe some of the posts get flagged.
Speaker 2: Some of their posts, don't you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's where they run into problems, you know,
Speaker 4: that's where people are like annoyed by them for not
Speaker 4: being a little bit stricter on that stuff, right, I mean, like,
Speaker 4: you know, content moderation and trusted safety and policy is
Speaker 4: not easy, right, Like I think that like it sort
Speaker 4: of does a disservice.
Speaker 2: I think to make it also seem like it.
Speaker 4: Would just be so easy just bend lots of people,
Speaker 4: Like that's not purely the answer, but clearly Facebook has
Speaker 4: done a very like there's a there's a lot to
Speaker 4: point to about how they fail, right, Yeah, they've They've.
Speaker 2: Done a lot of unforced errors, sure.
Speaker 3: At any rate, So you know, it was a good run.
Speaker 3: You'd a great run.
Speaker 2: It was a good run.
Speaker 4: But I started getting like a little bit like once
Speaker 4: I started seeing the like SEO stuff pop up. Yeah,
Speaker 4: a couple people were really like aggressively. There was one
Speaker 4: guy who I was like, buddy, what's what's what's going
Speaker 4: on here? Like he was just messaging me on every
Speaker 4: possible platform to be like, Nazi jokes not funny, You're disgusting.
Speaker 4: And I think at first he didn't know it was
Speaker 4: a joke, so he was just like he didn't think.
Speaker 2: It was a joke.
Speaker 4: He was like, you're disgusting, you support Nazis. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: then eventually.
Speaker 2: He realized that it was a joke, and he was like,
Speaker 2: Nazi jokes.
Speaker 4: So not funny, but he was, you know, he was
Speaker 4: sending me LinkedIn messages, he was emailing me. I was like, buddy, like,
Speaker 4: I agree, I don't like the Nazis either, Like, but
Speaker 4: please stop bothering me. Right, he was getting like a
Speaker 4: little I could tell I was in a my head
Speaker 4: and so I was like, I gotta fire realself.
Speaker 2: I can't keep this joke up much longer.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Okay, I didn't realize I sort of missed the whole.
Speaker 1: I mean I maybe saw somebody share the Nazi thing,
Speaker 1: like laughing about it or saw you do it, and
Speaker 1: I was like, well, clearly, you know she's making this joke.
Speaker 1: I guess I didn't realize that the reason you stopped
Speaker 1: was sort of because of this outside sort of weird
Speaker 1: shit that was going on, Like well.
Speaker 2: Some of amazing.
Speaker 4: I mean, I wasn't gonna keep up the gag forever.
Speaker 4: It was also like funny for one day and then
Speaker 4: like it wasn't you know, it wasn't gonna be that
Speaker 4: much funny right anymore anyways, But but it is weird
Speaker 4: that like because threads doesn't show you the you know,
Speaker 4: likes and reposts numbers. It's hard for an outsider to
Speaker 4: tell if something is actually going viral or not. So like,
Speaker 4: there's no reason you would have known that this was
Speaker 4: actually like blowing up right. The only reason I could
Speaker 4: know is because I was seeing some of the notifications
Speaker 4: of like the responses and the thing, and I was
Speaker 4: seeing the chatter on other platforms, like I had people
Speaker 4: like texting me weird stuff. Like honestly, it tricked a lot,
Speaker 4: like it tricked Walt Mosburg.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, like, oh really did about it?
Speaker 4: Like I don't think this threads thing is gonna be
Speaker 4: very good because of look at this, like there was
Speaker 4: a screenshot that was sort of like a distant bodies
Speaker 4: and like balth Mosberg doesn't know who I am. He
Speaker 4: doesn't know that I'm kidding, Like right, Waltmarpha, of course,
Speaker 4: is a very famous uh techtern.
Speaker 1: But you know what's funny is that Walt Mosburg and
Speaker 1: I love Walt, but one of his big projects he
Speaker 1: works on now is news literacy. Like he has this
Speaker 1: whole thing that he's doing around news literacy, And I
Speaker 1: just want to say, pretty amazing that he saw that
Speaker 1: didn't fact check who the person was, didn't know who
Speaker 1: the person was, and then like.
Speaker 4: Just I mean I have to say, like justice for
Speaker 4: Walt here, because like, how is he going to fact
Speaker 4: check Katie de toopolss is a little piece of shit? Right?
Speaker 3: Like no, I mean you could just google Katie to
Speaker 3: topless and they'd.
Speaker 4: Be like wow Alden seeing oh she is a former
Speaker 4: reporter at BuzzFeed, she probably works like that makes me
Speaker 4: chicks out.
Speaker 1: She's gone on the dark side. I guess, Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: he did. You're right, Okay, no reason.
Speaker 4: For him to know that, Like I'm a gremlin who
Speaker 4: likes fucking around, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, did you feel you were in danger at
Speaker 1: any point? Did you feel like it had gotten so?
Speaker 4: I think it was a mix of Like part of
Speaker 4: what I felt bad about is like I was dunking,
Speaker 4: like the dunk. I mean it wasn't even a dunk, right,
Speaker 4: Like it was upsetting people whose viewpoints I agree with, right,
Speaker 4: Like people who are like I don't want Nazis on
Speaker 4: my platform, and this upsets me.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, I agree, like and.
Speaker 3: So well, that's the point. That's the joke.
Speaker 4: Sometimes there are people who are being like a little
Speaker 4: too like gullible and earnest about it, but also like.
Speaker 1: No, I get it, I get it, But like the
Speaker 1: problem is the reason why it penetrated and the reason
Speaker 1: why people were upset is because it sounds exactly like
Speaker 1: something that some fucking editor in chief of Threads hired
Speaker 1: by Mark Zuckerberg and Adamasiri might actually say.
Speaker 3: And like that's the thing.
Speaker 1: It struck a nerve both internally, I'm sure ed Metta,
Speaker 1: and also with the audience because it rang true and
Speaker 1: and and by the way, I'm not saying you shouldn't
Speaker 1: have killed the joke. That makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: but I think what is more telling is it rang
Speaker 1: so true and so many people reacted in earnest to it,
Speaker 1: and that's not an accident. And I actually think like
Speaker 1: at the heart of your joke, which obviously was you
Speaker 1: ultimately and I know for a fact you had no
Speaker 1: ulterior motive of doing anything smart or.
Speaker 3: You know interesting.
Speaker 1: I know that I know I know you well enough
Speaker 1: to know that you were just fucking around and being
Speaker 1: funny and thought it was like a good gag.
Speaker 3: But like the at the heart of it, what it
Speaker 3: really exposes.
Speaker 1: Is like the actual underlying bullshit of these platforms and
Speaker 1: and like in a way like was it's the most
Speaker 1: effective possible critique of their shit. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: people are always like comedians are the modern day philosophers.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think like you're your like parody
Speaker 1: or whatever worked because people think it's completely reasonable that
Speaker 1: that's what a representative of Threads would say, and that's
Speaker 1: actually like a Mark Zuckerberg problem that like they have
Speaker 1: yet to really effectively solve.
Speaker 4: So yeah, you know, and to be perfectly fair, also,
Speaker 4: I mean, like I you know, I did think I
Speaker 4: was being like a little bit smart.
Speaker 2: And cheeky, but I will also say that I feel
Speaker 2: like I was old.
Speaker 1: Look kay, I mean I'm not saying it wasn't clever,
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying, like, I don't think you were
Speaker 1: like trying to make a major point about like society
Speaker 1: or anything.
Speaker 4: I think I saw that like my eight friends would
Speaker 4: think it was pretty funny, and they did, and they
Speaker 4: did anyway, So yeah, So then I think the next
Speaker 4: day my plan to get out of it was I said,
Speaker 4: you know, oh boy, I have an unscheduled meeting in
Speaker 4: my calendar to meet with Mark this morning, so.
Speaker 2: Excited to go and see what the big boss.
Speaker 4: Says, and then you know, thirty minutes later, I said,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I can't believe this, but I've been fired.
Speaker 3: You played out who the whole narrative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a lot of fun for me.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you something.
Speaker 1: Your thing that you were doing was one of the
Speaker 1: few things in the early days of Threads that really
Speaker 1: made me feel like this could work. I was like, oh, like,
Speaker 1: Katie's doing her thing and everybody's kind of like reacting
Speaker 1: to it, and we're all, like, you know, where most
Speaker 1: of us are in on the joke, some of us
Speaker 1: are not, But like, it just felt like weird, you know,
Speaker 1: it felt like weird Twitter. It felt like like, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of shit that goes on where it's it's loose,
Speaker 1: you know, and like it's posting. But honestly, like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't see a lot of that on Threads. I
Speaker 1: don't see a lot of anything of like sparks, any
Speaker 1: kind of real like delight.
Speaker 3: At this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Threads has definitely.
Speaker 4: I mean, all the indicators showed that, you know, it's
Speaker 4: been dropping and users. Although it's hard, I don't know,
Speaker 4: I still check it multiple times a day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at threads like on a more regular
Speaker 1: basis than I'm looking at Twitter.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know, it's I think
Speaker 4: it's still like hard to say what will happen. Like
Speaker 4: it's not a surprise that people who came for the
Speaker 4: first day to like be like, oh my favorite Hollywood
Speaker 4: celebrities and Instagram influencers are on here, and then of
Speaker 4: course those people sort of dropped off off like and
Speaker 4: are active. I think the question is how many people
Speaker 4: will stick around who were like I've never been on Twitter,
Speaker 4: or like maybe I joined Twitter once and smith like
Speaker 4: I left, but hey, goods, thing is kind of fun.
Speaker 4: And how many people are like I'm on Twitter and
Speaker 4: I hate it, So what is this a good place
Speaker 4: for me to go instead? You know, Like yeah, I
Speaker 4: think between those two things, like there's it's kind of
Speaker 4: it's you know, I think it's still got a chance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think the thing about it is,
Speaker 1: you know, not that we can really know what the
Speaker 1: future holds, but just seems like the the value of
Speaker 1: it and the utility of it is just going down
Speaker 1: and down. The question is like can I mean, to me,
Speaker 1: it's like can the threads app figure out some of
Speaker 1: the basic things that people want who are migrating or
Speaker 1: who want to use something else, which is like I
Speaker 1: need to find all the people that like I want
Speaker 1: to follow, and they need to be able to find me,
Speaker 1: like the real people that I follow. Not like no
Speaker 1: diss to my Instagram folks, but like that graph is
Speaker 1: not reflective of like who I.
Speaker 3: Want for like information and jokes.
Speaker 1: It's more like things I like to look at or
Speaker 1: family members who I want to see, like pictures of
Speaker 1: like they're like what they're doing on vacation or their.
Speaker 3: Kids or whatever. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's not like, Yeah, it's definitely a different use case,
Speaker 1: and like I think they need to have some solution
Speaker 1: to that, and they need to have some solution to
Speaker 1: making it feel like there's an active, real time conversation
Speaker 1: going on. One other thing I think actually kind of sucks.
Speaker 1: It's like Twitter tells you when there's new posts, like
Speaker 1: it's like there's new posts and you're like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: I gotta check those out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Threads doesn't seem to do that.
Speaker 1: When I can tell like if you sit on threads
Speaker 1: and just like check out what's going on, it doesn't
Speaker 1: like prompt you to.
Speaker 4: I mean that actually feels like something that might be intentional,
Speaker 4: Like I feel like that's sort of like we want
Speaker 4: to make this a healthy place. It doesn't make you
Speaker 4: feel like you're like addicted and have to refresh constant.
Speaker 3: Well, then it won't work. You need to be addicted.
Speaker 3: That's the whole point of this type of service.
Speaker 4: I believe that they are working on more product features
Speaker 4: that will address a lot of the.
Speaker 2: Complaints that people have right now.
Speaker 4: I think the thing is like they clearly launched is
Speaker 4: such a bare boe owned version that it may have
Speaker 4: actually been a turn off to a fair amount of people,
Speaker 4: because you know, when you launched it as a like
Speaker 4: you couldn't even see like just a following feed.
Speaker 2: It was like it was only the sort of four
Speaker 2: year yeah right.
Speaker 4: I Mean the funny thing is like had they waited
Speaker 4: a few more weeks finished out those extra features they
Speaker 4: were working on, Elon would have done something justice.
Speaker 1: There's no shortage, Yes, there's no shortage of stupid shit
Speaker 1: that guy's going to come up with.
Speaker 4: I mean I think that, like, I think the idea
Speaker 4: that they had to jump on that timing of like oh,
Speaker 4: shit like Twitter's down, like let's get our replacement thing
Speaker 4: out right away.
Speaker 2: It is like people still would have.
Speaker 4: Liked it because Twitter is still just as fucked up
Speaker 4: and you know, even worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's all bad.
Speaker 1: I do think, you know, not to not to be
Speaker 1: a downer or whatever, but I do feel like we're
Speaker 1: just at the period of like the social media thing
Speaker 1: has just become so such a chore and so like
Speaker 1: un fun. I find more than anything, like what is
Speaker 1: just bums me out is there was a period, a
Speaker 1: pretty long period where at least for my purpose, which
Speaker 1: is like funny jokes and like you know news stuff
Speaker 1: or like you know story stuff that people are like
Speaker 1: posting or talking about, it wasn't the way it is now,
Speaker 1: Like it didn't feel that way.
Speaker 3: It wasn't always combat.
Speaker 1: Yes, there would be like the character of the day
Speaker 1: or whatever, but that was like one person, not everybody
Speaker 1: was like in the site, you know, it really wasn't
Speaker 1: even that fucking popular, like by comparison to an Instagram
Speaker 1: or a Facebook or like I think they're like fucking
Speaker 1: TikTok or snapchat.
Speaker 3: They're all way bigger, oh way bigger. But it served a.
Speaker 1: Purpose and it was like pretty fun most of the time.
Speaker 1: It could occasionally be horrible, but it was like fairly
Speaker 1: fun like most of the time. And then like you know,
Speaker 1: I would say, coinciding with like the Trump campaign for sure,
Speaker 1: that definitely upped the temperature on the service. And through
Speaker 1: those years I just became like really degraded in like
Speaker 1: the kind of discourse. It was just people who were made.
Speaker 1: And Elon took that in, like he took all of
Speaker 1: the anger and the vitriol and the like brokenness and
Speaker 1: the context collapse and everything and just magnified it in
Speaker 1: a way that makes it feel really shitty and like
Speaker 1: a bombery, you.
Speaker 2: Know what it's like.
Speaker 3: You know Ghostbusters too, I'm familiar with the film.
Speaker 4: So you know the premise there is like there's this
Speaker 4: haunted painting of the Vigo.
Speaker 3: It's it's a it's a painting of a guy named Vigo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think his name is like Vigo the Destroyer
Speaker 1: or Vigo the Annihilator or something.
Speaker 4: And he's a sort of you know I've in the
Speaker 4: terrible type historical persona or whatever, and and he is,
Speaker 4: you know, a haunted ghost and he his power. He
Speaker 4: grows more and more powerful by feeding off hate and anger.
Speaker 4: And you know, it just so happens his painting has
Speaker 4: come to the met in New York City and there's
Speaker 4: this sort of great scene where it's like the subways
Speaker 4: are just flowing with this pink slime and it's like, oh,
Speaker 4: it's because everyone, you know, New York City is so angry,
Speaker 4: like all the time, cabs honking or whatever. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: feel like that's you know, that's kind of a metaphor
Speaker 4: for Elon Musk and Twitter is like feeding off this.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the guy's name is Vigo the Carpathian.
Speaker 1: That's the name of the of the painting. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyhow, but I'll tell.
Speaker 4: You what, Josh, I feel both similar and different to you.
Speaker 2: And here's how.
Speaker 4: Okay, I too mourn the loss of Twitter. I loved Twitter,
Speaker 4: like it was so much.
Speaker 3: Twitter was your home. Twitter was your playground.
Speaker 2: Well, I think a.
Speaker 4: Lot of people enjoyed it when it was good, right,
Speaker 4: I agree, a lot of really when you think when
Speaker 4: you remember all the fun times we had on there, right,
Speaker 4: Like it was a great place to be for like
Speaker 4: jokes and like it was a really useful place for news,
Speaker 4: Like if there was like a breaking I remember, like
Speaker 4: it was really useful in Hurricane Sandy.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, no, I mean there was real there were
Speaker 1: real time moments on Twitter that were really quite valuable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like there was a lot, like there were
Speaker 4: a lot of like really fun things, and I like
Speaker 4: I really enjoyed having wonderful, positive connections with other people
Speaker 4: and like that was great, and I like, I, like
Speaker 4: you am sad that it is like kind of going.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's not gonna shut down tomorrow,
Speaker 4: but like it's not that anymore. It's not the fun,
Speaker 4: delightful place. A lot of the people that I enjoyed
Speaker 4: communicating with have already left. It's you know, it's not
Speaker 4: as much fun. Like fifty percent of the tweets on
Speaker 4: there are about Twitter or X. However, I think, unlike you,
Speaker 4: I feel like I have some optimism because I feel
Speaker 4: like the demise of Twitter and like sort of as
Speaker 4: you described, like the end of a sort of social
Speaker 4: media moment where it's like Facebook has stunk for a
Speaker 4: long time, and like I think a lot of people
Speaker 4: have Instagram fatigued too, and like I watch a ton
Speaker 4: of TikTok, but it's nothing that like my friends were.
Speaker 3: Using right now talk is it for me?
Speaker 2: It's a it's a solitary.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a private You're not sharing, you're not fucking reposting,
Speaker 1: you're not responding, You're just experiencing the TikTok.
Speaker 4: It's pure consumption. I enjoy it, but I feel like
Speaker 4: there's no there's not much social going on there for
Speaker 4: me at least. Yes, but I do think that like
Speaker 4: this has left an opening for something new, and I
Speaker 4: do think that, like, I think there's reasons to be
Speaker 4: optimistic about.
Speaker 2: What new is next.
Speaker 4: You know, Wow, the idea of replacements for Twitter that
Speaker 4: are you know, conceivably smaller, like blue Sky massed on
Speaker 4: even Threads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is spoken like spoken like the
Speaker 1: future editor in chief of some social network.
Speaker 2: I have to say this is the mark I'm available
Speaker 2: for hire.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I'll I'll say this, and then we
Speaker 1: got Unfortunately, we do have to wrap up.
Speaker 3: As much as I'm enjoying this.
Speaker 1: The biggest mistake they made was not hiring you immediately
Speaker 1: to actually be the editor in chief of Threads. In
Speaker 1: my opinion, the greatest move in the world would have
Speaker 1: been for them to immediately be like let's do it.
Speaker 3: Let's hire Katie. And also, by the.
Speaker 4: Way, I think I for a moment I was like,
Speaker 4: what if they have to say face and I'm right, no,
Speaker 4: But like, I don't think that's a job I would want.
Speaker 1: I do think you would bring a lot of great
Speaker 1: insight and ideas into a place like that. And frankly,
Speaker 1: like I think a service like and not by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm not like making a pitch for you, but like
Speaker 1: a service like Threads would be better for having a
Speaker 1: person like you there who actually like knows why things
Speaker 1: like threads the way it could be, like why it's
Speaker 1: good because I don't think a lot I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people there who don't didn't ever really
Speaker 1: get or care about Twitter, who are like, we build
Speaker 1: a thing that's kind of like it. It's like yeah,
Speaker 1: but like you maybe don't actually understand some of the
Speaker 1: key things that make it useful and interesting anyhow. But Katie,
Speaker 1: as always, I have just tremendously enjoyed our conversation. Unquestionably,
Speaker 1: you're one of my favorite people to talk to. And
Speaker 1: I'm not just saying that because you are the mother
Speaker 1: of my of my niece and nephew. It's also because
Speaker 1: you're a genius, a great genius. But it is a
Speaker 1: nice perk that you're the mother of my niece and nephew.
Speaker 1: I think they're pretty cool, and I think it's a
Speaker 1: pretty cool situation all things considered.
Speaker 4: All things considered, it is, Josh. You are also one
Speaker 4: of my favorite people. Thank you to You are one
Speaker 4: of the only people in my family who actually appreciated
Speaker 4: my threads prank.
Speaker 1: Oh well, anybody who anybody, including Eric who didn't fully appreciate.
Speaker 1: I could see Eric being like, you, guys, stop guy,
Speaker 1: knock that off, like you probably getting very upset about it.
Speaker 2: But I like rolling his eyes a little bit.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, I can't imagine what it's like to
Speaker 1: be dealing with you on a twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: basis when it comes to your like present.
Speaker 4: The problem is it's exactly what you would imagine, which
Speaker 4: is incredibly annoying for Eric, my husband, which is that
Speaker 4: like it's it's me on my phone giggling to myself
Speaker 4: and it's just like.
Speaker 1: And then like I assume at some point you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: like I'm getting death threats or whatever, because like right,
Speaker 1: because that definitely has happened on more than one to you.
Speaker 2: There was only one point where he was like, do
Speaker 2: we still lock the doors?
Speaker 1: Like you up?
Speaker 3: I lock it up. I lock it up.
Speaker 1: You should get some home alone style traps around your
Speaker 1: house just in case. You never know when these guys
Speaker 1: are going to try to go bust in there, you
Speaker 1: have to hit them with some paint cans or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly all right, Katie.
Speaker 1: Anyhow, thank you for joining me, and I expect that
Speaker 1: you'll be back soon to tell us of your new
Speaker 1: adventures online.
Speaker 2: No response to that, thanks Joss you around.
Speaker 1: Well, that is our show for this week, and I
Speaker 1: think what more can be said? I think Katie has
Speaker 1: said it all, and then I said a little bit
Speaker 1: extra to so I guess there could be more said.
Speaker 3: But you know, I think we're good now. I think
Speaker 3: we've said it all.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with more what future, and
Speaker 1: as always, I wish you and your family the very
Speaker 1: best