WEBVTT - Max Read on how the Internet Got Infested With Garbage 0:00:02.600 --> 0:00:17.320 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.160 Hello and welcome to another episode of The Odd Lots Podcast. 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:24.439 I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. 0:00:24.520 --> 0:00:26.720 Tracy, you don't use Twitter like quite as much as 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:26.960 I do. 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:29.760 Still, no, I kind of. I don't know what happened. 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:31.800 I guess I just went off Twitter. You know what 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:34.520 platform I'm on quite a lot, and it doesn't help 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:36.640 me in any way in terms of all lots in 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:38.680 my career. But I really like Reddit. 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:40.960 Now I know, I see you. Actually, Tracy doesn't like 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:44.559 that I sometimes notice what she's browsing, but I respect 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:45.120 that You're. 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.320 Joe is constantly looking over my shoulder. And whenever I 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.760 start like shopping online for five minutes, you start talking 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:53.200 about the furniture that I'm buying. 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.080 Well, it's really nice, It's really I'm always it's because 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:58.880 it looks really good. But I still am completely addicted 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:03.720 to Twitter. And I don't really know why, Because why 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:06.840 I don't know. This is like a question for therapy 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:09.080 for a long time, because like I know, it's gotten 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:11.280 really bad and I don't even I don't know. I 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:13.360 like to be there. I like to post words and 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:16.560 the short form is a good medium for me. It 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:20.040 feels like sometimes I see interesting things. We still source 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:22.400 a lot of guests from Twitter, that's where you're be honest, 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:25.160 and we still discover like experts. They're still there, but 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:27.800 like it's subjectively gotten way worse and I don't even 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:29.160 think it's just a Elon Musk thing. 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:31.560 By the way, Well, here's the thing, Like this is 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:34.559 the key difference in my mind between Reddit right now 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:37.480 and a bunch of other social media platforms. Twitter is 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:40.600 now run by this like insane algo right that just 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:44.520 pushes stuff at you and sometimes it's really random. TikTok 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:47.320 is the same thing. Reddit, at least you can still 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:51.360 curate your feeds relatively easily. But even with Reddit, obviously 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:54.960 since the IPO, there's pressure to boost revenues and we're 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:58.240 seeing like more algo driven stuff, a lot more AI 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.480 generated content like have always been a problem, but I 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:03.600 feel like it might be starting to get worse. 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:07.640 You know what platform is really good? What Discord? Oh? Yes, 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:11.720 in fact, listeners should check out discord, dot gg slash 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:14.200 odd lots because twenty four to seven in there there 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:18.440 is a well curated world of fellow listeners who are 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:20.600 interested in all the same things, talking in a very 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:27.680 generally polite and adult way about important news and finance, markets, economics, tech, automotive, semiconductors, 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:30.079 all those things that we like. And actually today we're 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:32.400 gonna chat with He's not just a Discord member, but 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:34.720 sometimes he chats in there and he has opinions on 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:35.280 the Internet. 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:36.120 That sounds great. 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:38.200 The perfect guest, the perfect guests. We have the perfect 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:40.120 guest to talk about why so much of the Internet 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.320 has essentially turned to complete garbage filled with slop AI 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:47.079 generated nonsense, completely made up news stuff like that. We're 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:50.880 going to be speaking with Max read odd Lots, Discord lurker, 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.400 but more importantly, the author and sole proprietor of the 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.200 excellent read Max substack, one of the few substacks that 0:02:57.240 --> 0:02:59.560 I actually pay money for. So Max, thank you for 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:00.440 coming on odd Lacks. 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:01.639 I'm so excited to be here. 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:03.359 Thank you for being a part of the Discord. I 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:05.480 did's find that you don't poets much, but we appreciate 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:05.959 that you lark. 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:07.960 I mean, I'm trying to put all of my words 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:11.880 in a monetizable format. Yeah, I have the newsletter fair enough. 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:14.720 So one thing I'm always curious about when people are 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:18.519 like internet or culture correspondence, how did you get into 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:19.440 that realm? 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:22.600 So I got my starting journalism at Gawker, the media 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:26.400 gossip website that no longer exists, and I started there 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:29.040 in twenty ten, and I would say I worked my 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:31.120 way up, except the way things worked at Cowkers, the 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.079 people at the top just got fired and whoever was 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:36.760 left continued to advance. So I was there during the 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:39.560 sort of twenty eleven twenty twelve era which people who 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:42.080 were in media will remember as the moment when Facebook, 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:45.559 so to speak, turned on the floodgates or open the floodgates, 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:48.560 and all of a sudden, we went from sort of 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:52.800 jockeying for traffic from Google or even homepage traffic. People 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:54.800 would visit Gawker dot com all the time. I used 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:56.880 to do that, Yeah, I mean Goacker was old enough 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.440 to be a homepage site. And then Facebook said, hey, 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:04.280 we've got hundreds of millions, billions of users, let's direct 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:06.160 some of that at the media. And then, for various 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:09.560 occult reasons, we started to get fifteen million page views 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.280 on a blog, totally unheard of. For reasons we couldn't 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:14.840 figure out, we couldn't understand, and because I was in 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:17.160 management at this point, I became kind of obsessed with this, 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:22.479 and I found myself thinking constantly about how culture and 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:26.080 media and businesses based around those things were changing because 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:28.400 of the way platforms were able to direct these huge 0:04:28.400 --> 0:04:31.799 audiences to places. So, I mean, it's essentially it's because 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:34.040 I went crazy when Facebook decided to change the way 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:35.840 media worked, and I've never become Saine, sir. 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:39.840 Do you think every once in a while, like I 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:42.840 don't know, like Gawker's there's probably is some version of 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:45.040 Gaarker that exists out there on like It's fifth relaunching. 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:47.200 I'm not actually sure if that title exists, but it'll 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:50.239 be launched. If it's not currently existing, someone will relaunch 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:52.240 it at some point. But even though it sided that, 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.000 there's always every once in a while, like some new thing. 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:56.800 It's like we're going to bring back the good old 0:04:56.880 --> 0:04:59.560 days of like a blog and a homepage and it's 0:04:59.560 --> 0:04:59.960 like a team. 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:02.840 I'm pretty sure we've said that too. 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:05.800 Is there just impossible in twenty to twenty. 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:08.640 Four, Yeah, I mean, I think that substack is probably 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:13.640 the closest platform to facilitate the creation of a blog 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:16.880 like object, but because it's email distribution above all, you 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:19.200 actually can sort of force your way into people's field 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:22.120 of vision instead of requiring them to go to a homepage. 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:23.960 I mean, we were talking about this already, but the 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:26.680 existence of the homepage, as I think that people would 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:29.360 check day and day out, was really important to as 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:31.200 far as I'm concerned, was really important to the way 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:33.480 a blog exists, how it feels, the tone, the kind 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:36.559 of structure of it. And now that most people's first 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:40.000 visit is a platform like Twitter or Instagram or one 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:42.400 of the others, it's a lot harder to like cultivate 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:45.600 the audience necessary to type in, you know, Joe Wisenthal 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:47.760 dot com or whatever your blog homepage would be. 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:51.000 Could you talk a bit more about what happened when 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:55.400 like Facebook and the other platforms started dominating the media 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.600 sphere and generating those millions of page views, Like, how 0:05:58.600 --> 0:05:59.720 did that change. 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:03.159 The actual Yeah, I'll use Gawker as an example. So 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.560 Gacker began, as people remember as a pretty mean let's 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:08.080 call it a mean gossip, not as mean as I 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.080 think people remember, but it was sort of sophisticated, witty 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:15.800 cutting and about a kind of narrow cast of media 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:19.760 and political and entertainment figures. And this was sort of 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:22.040 starting to change and open up as it became clear that, 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.080 you know, search engine optimization or SEO would allow you 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:27.920 to get a bigger audience if you wrote about celebrities 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:30.400 that people were googling, for example. But Facebook opened it 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:32.800 up even bigger and even as far as I was concerned, 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:35.280 sort of stranger way, because what you were going for 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:38.200 was not like what are people searching for or even 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:41.400 necessarily sort of what people are interested in. It's what 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:44.040 will people share and what will people click on if 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:47.600 they come across it in their Facebook feed. So in general, 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:49.640 especially at the early stages there, what you were getting 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:52.120 was a lot less of the kind of like insidery, 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:54.920 what's Rupert Murdock up to? And a lot more I mean, 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:57.280 cat videos doesn't even quite begin to cover it. It's 0:06:57.320 --> 0:06:59.840 sort of sentimental content, inspirational. 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:03.440 I always think of like those BuzzFeed lists like twenty 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:05.800 three things only people who live in Upstate New York 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.200 would know, and they're so powerful because you just share 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:11.120 it if you're from Upstate New York with everyone you 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:13.640 know from upstate New York, and it just sort of changes, 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:16.960 like what that category of content is that people care about, 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:17.960 that affinity content. 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:19.880 Yeah, absolutely, I mean there was a huge amount of 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:23.640 affinity you know, micro targeted identity content, things that people 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.200 would share, things that people would sort of like throw 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:28.240 out to all their friends. I mean this was the 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:30.720 Internet between say twenty twelve and twenty fourteen or so, 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:33.200 was really dominated by this kind of thing. And if 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.000 you were there, you remember BuzzFeed as being you know, 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:38.160 Jona Predi would talk about it as being the next 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:40.360 Disney or something, because it had that kind of momentum 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.160 behind it, the sense that it was so big. Underneath 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:44.480 all of that, it turns out what was actually big 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:46.000 was Facebook, not BuzzFeed. 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:48.840 I feel like there's also this and there was a 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:51.520 famous I think it was actually the All which you 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:53.640 were part of, but I think it was published there 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:57.800 maybe somewhere else. Like the psychological damage that people who 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:01.000 weren't at BuzzFeed were undergoing at the time because everyone 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.200 just saw BuzzFeed is like there like huge internet juggernaut, 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:06.280 and if you weren't there, like you weren't cool and 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:08.360 you weren't part of the Like, I think it's actually crazy. 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:11.200 The degree to which people who weren't their brand got 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:13.280 broken by that'd. 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:16.880 Be broken by BuzzFeed. Okay, so we've been reminiscing about 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:20.440 the good old Internet of like twenty thirteen. Can we 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:21.680 talk about what's happening now? 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.800 Yeah. So I think we're sort of undergoing a process 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:27.600 that I think of as tiktokization of all these platforms. 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:30.720 I mean, you know, the Carsonization, the idea that like 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:34.760 creatures that live deep deep deep underwater tend to evolve 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:38.200 into crab like shapes even though they're genetically quite distinct. 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:40.200 That goes viral on Twitter everyone. Yeah, exactly. 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:44.080 The evolutionary craftures basically turned them all into like hard shelled, 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:47.640 you know, multi limbed, claw bearing animals. And I think 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:51.040 there's a similar process happening online where every platform is 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:53.800 turning itself into TikTok I mean, Carsonization is like a 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:55.559 fun metaphor. It might not be quite right. It might 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:57.559 just be people copying what they see is the most 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:01.120 successful and biggest platform. But when I say tiktokozation, what 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:03.880 I mean is a focus on content from strangers and 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:06.720 people you don't know, rather than your sort of social networks. 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.640 A tendency like a sort of scrollable video feed that 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:13.920 you just bounce through really quickly. And you know, like 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:15.960 when I say content from strangers, this is all based 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:19.079 around the FYP like a really you know, heavily weighted 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.160 algorithm that's supposed to give you exactly what you're looking 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:24.319 down for. It's just the for you page on TikTok. 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:26.760 So if you're a twin Instagram right right, So if 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:28.319 you're on Twitter, that for you, there's a four you 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.200 feed which is effectively the same deal. It sends you 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:34.200 what's going viral on the platform. If you scroll past 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:36.559 a college football tweet, you will suddenly see twenty five 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:38.920 college football tweets in your feed. And then the other 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:40.560 big thing, which I think is really important to this 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:43.200 is that the platforms that are heading in the TikTok 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:46.760 direction tend to pay posters directly for engagement, which we 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:49.679 know about from Twitter, especially the blue check program and 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:52.160 the sort of general like Twitter program where they will 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:54.200 pay you out if you have particularly engaging posts. 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:57.679 Would you show your FYP to your friends and family, 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:01.080 my Twitter fyp or my anyone anyone? 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:03.200 I think I would. I mean, I find it. It 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:04.920 reveals me to be a much I brought up college 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:06.760 footble because it turns out I'm a much bigger sports 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.280 fan than I realized. I was, like, all of my fops. 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:11.160 Are like ninety or the ago has just kind you 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:12.440 as like a white male. 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:15.680 See I recently searched like a health related thing, and 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:19.680 then my FOYP thing was like disgusting after I'm not 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:20.319 going to talk about it. 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:22.800 That this is This is one of the problems with algos. 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:25.280 It's like when you first sign up to a platform, 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:27.480 I find there is so much pressure on the first 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:29.560 thing you click, because that's basically going to show up 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:31.959 in your algorithm forever. It feels like. 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:34.319 Yeah, I mean, and I find myself very consciously if 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:36.679 I have accidentally gotten into a place I really don't 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.400 want to be. You know, politics on Twitter in particular 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:41.240 is a bad situation for this. If you if you 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:42.840 go down the wrong rabbit hole, the next thing you know, 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:45.160 your FYP is just filled with guys you never want 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:46.959 to hear from and don't ever want to see again. 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:49.600 And so I will really consciously go and find something 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:52.120 else to like scroll through, click on, you know, like 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:54.920 wait over so that I can cleanse my fyp of 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:55.439 all this stuff. 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:59.000 Yeah, so one thing I don't get about this recent development, 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:01.240 And by the way, I don't so I'm not on TikTok. 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:04.840 I rely on samro to curate the best of TikTok 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:08.520 and post it on Instagram for me. But like, why 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:11.880 the emphasis on random content from alges Because when I 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:14.960 think back to the essence of a social network, the 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:17.840 idea was that you had an actual social network of 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:19.920 people that you know that you want to hear from. 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:22.719 I mean, I think what the big platforms found was 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:25.360 that people actually didn't really want to hear from their 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:28.280 friends and family. I mean, we know this as a phenomenon. 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:30.520 I think we can all acknowledge it being a phenomenon 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.240 on both Facebook and Twitter, where you had this idea 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:36.760 of context collapse, where you would be posting something to 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:40.720 an imagined audience of your friends, say, but your aunts 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:43.319 and uncles and everybody else is also on the same platform, 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:45.600 and all of a sudden, the things you feel comfortable 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:47.040 saying in front of your friends and in front of 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:49.600 your family might be different, and they might get in 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:51.760 fights in the comments, and it might be awkward and strange. 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:55.920 And I think that Facebook kind of recognized this. Twitter 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:57.319 is a slightly differenting because it was I think it 0:11:57.360 --> 0:11:59.400 was pretty rare to sort of follow your family on Twitter. 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:01.640 But you know, there's a reason for that, and I 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:04.240 think TikTok coming through and showing that actually there was 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:09.000 a huge opportunity in these sort of fully programmatic, algorithmic, 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:12.840 non social networking feeds sort of pushed Facebook in particular, 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:15.800 because remember Meta owns Facebook and Instagram, and it sort 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:18.520 of controls a huge amount of what platforms are doing. 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:20.560 In an even moment, decided that they were going to 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:23.240 start pushing a very similar kind of structure. 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:40.760 So can we talk about Twitter or X for a second, 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:42.800 because that's where I started and I still to this 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:46.040 day on Twitter like a lot, although actually I think 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:48.120 I post a little bit less than I used to, 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:49.280 especially on weekends. 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:50.480 Are you monetizing yet? 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:53.000 I am not. I do not think that. I don't know. 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:55.120 I just did my ethics training here at Bloomberg and 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:57.880 I didn't say anything about that specifically, but I just 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:00.480 probably not going to touch that. You know, there was 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:03.040 a point, I would say, I don't know, seven or 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:05.720 eight years ago, maybe a little longer, where it never 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:08.760 felt that like Twitter just never had the same size 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:11.360 really as some of the other big social networks, particularly 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:14.640 Instagram or Facebook. But I always felt like all reporters 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:17.000 are on there. You know. Other people have said this 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:19.840 Twitter is like the assignment desk for much of the Internet, 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:22.880 And I remember, like one point, I don't know, watching 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:26.240 the Summer Olympics one year, and the basically the news 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:29.040 was like and then this basketball player tweeted this from 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:31.240 the city, and it's like, Oh, the future of TV 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:34.920 news is actually people reading tweets on air. Is Twitter 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:38.520 right now like setting aside whether it's profitable or good 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:39.760 or anything, is it important? 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:40.760 Yes? 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:43.440 I mean I think it's important in a kind of 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:46.760 disconnected way, not in the same way that you're talking about, 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:49.000 where we'd functioned as a kind of assignment desk. My 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:51.079 friend John Herman, who's the tech writer for New York 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:53.120 mag and is a great thinker about these things, used 0:13:53.120 --> 0:13:55.880 to call Twitter the context for media, like it was 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:58.199 where you'd go to understand sort of what was going on. 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.840 And I don't think it funked like that anymore. But 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.439 because of the fact that it's owned by Elon Musk, 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:06.680 I think you could argue, oh, Elon bought Twitter in 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.480 order to make himself important to politics. But in a 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:12.800 funny way, I think Elon as an incredibly influential and 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.080 like hugely well resourced figure. Owning the social network means 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:18.600 that what happens on it is important in so far 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:21.440 as it reflects an idea about like where politics is headed. 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:24.480 But like the way you're talking about reading people's tweets 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:26.520 out loud, it still happens, sure, but it's just not 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:27.560 it's not the same thing. 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.120 So one thing I wanted to bring up is, I 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:33.080 guess breaking news on Twitter, because that seems to have 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:36.120 changed quite a bit. And I do remember again the 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:38.120 good old days when you would go on Twitter when 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:40.720 something is happening, you would search and you would get 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:43.800 like a lot of different opinions, maybe little anecdotes on 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:48.040 the ground, reportage, things like that. What happens with breaking 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:48.640 news now? 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:52.760 Well, I mean talking about the FYP because it's not chronological, 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:55.080 because it's really kind of anti chronological. You're going to 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:56.760 see stuff if you sign on to Twitter and you 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.040 look at not your following list or any of the list, 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:00.760 if you just look at the def feed, which is 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.040 your FYP, you're going to get tweets from twelve hours ago, 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:06.920 from twenty hours ago, from five minutes ago, all jammed 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:08.680 up against one another. You're going to get a huge 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:11.680 number of people who are putting themselves out there, not 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:16.840 for any kind of let's say, noble informational value, yeah, 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:20.600 but to specifically to get followers to get engagement payouts. 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:25.040 So you're incentivizing hoaxes. You're sort of diminishing the value 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:27.800 of the feed itself, and so what you get. I mean, 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:29.840 we saw this with the most recent hurricanes. This is 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:31.360 a you know, I wrote about this for my newsletter 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:33.760 that this was a thing where Twitter used to be 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:36.840 the place you would go check for a ongoing news 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.960 event like that, and consistently it was. For all the 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:41.560 things you can say that were bad about Twitter, it 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:44.360 was a great place to find people like local reporters 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:46.240 in the area or even people who were like living 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:48.800 through a disaster event like that. You would find images 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:51.280 and video, you'd have one hundred different meteorologists who were 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:54.400 able to help you contextualize all these things. And I 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:55.960 wasn't able to find any of that, really, I mean, 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:57.440 it was there to some extent. I don't want to 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:01.240 pretend that there weren't meteorologists, say, being helpful, or local reporters, 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:03.920 but it was just drowned in this flood of influencers 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:06.280 and hoaxters and people just trying to get attention for 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:08.720 various reasons in a way that felt sort of impossible 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:10.920 to learn anything real or true about what was happening. 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:11.080 No. 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:14.960 I found this true. In fact, on the most recent hurricane, 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:18.400 the one that was heading right near Tampa Bay, I 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:22.280 realized that I had been on Twitter all morning the 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:24.640 next like through the night, and I didn't actually know 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:26.960 what had happened. And then the only place that I 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:30.120 found the sort of the preliminary assessments was Bloomberg dot com, 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:32.480 And I thought that was like really striking, like I 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:34.920 just didn't get any value. But you know the other thing, 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:38.600 and you mentioned hoaxes, and I guess, like in twenty 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:41.680 sixteen people started calling it fake news, but like the 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:45.480 degree of like fiction or fantasy, you know, you'd like 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:48.760 see these tweets that would go viral for like Fema 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:52.120 is on the ground aiming snipers at anyone who's trying, 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:54.600 and they've been told that they're not allowed to return 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:57.400 to their house and their private property is now the 0:16:57.400 --> 0:16:59.880 property of the federal government and all that, like truly 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.840 like beyond fiction type stuff, and then it'll have like 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:07.600 fifteen thousand retweets. And I'm curiously if you have a 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:10.560 theory for that, because to me it feels like part 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:13.280 of what's going on there's the engagement bait, there's maybe 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:15.800 the desire for blue checks to get payout. But I 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:20.159 also like worry that basically sort of real facts that 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:23.960 exist in the world are just becoming like a category 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:25.800 of facts. And then there's other but these are just 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:28.280 as good and these are just as interesting. To me, it. 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:32.680 Feels like the algo like can only measure engagement. Basically, 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:36.120 it can't measure quality of the tweet, right, So if 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:38.960 someone is doing engagement bait, if they're just making people 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:41.760 angry or they're just tweeting out something that's wrong and 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:44.199 then a bunch of people come on and start like 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:46.800 pointing out that it's wrong, it still counts as engagement. 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:48.560 And I guess what it would also say is like 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:51.040 I'm not even sure people care that it's fact, Like 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:53.040 the idea like there may have been one point where, like, 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.959 you know, I don't believe traditional media. I believe these 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:59.200 alternative sources for various reasons. Some of them actually might 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:01.960 be legitimate my view, but actually the idea that like 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:04.720 this is an actual fact to be believed, I'm not 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:06.160 convinced is that important to people. 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:07.600 I mean, I think there's an attitude a lot of 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:09.639 people have on Twitter. I mean, there's two things I'll say. 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:10.840 One is that I think there's an attitude a lot 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:13.080 of people have on Twitter, on social media, but especially 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:16.399 on Twitter, that you're not actually engaged in describing the 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:19.399 world as it is, in communicating information other people. You 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:23.200 were engaged in a fight or a war between political parties, 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:25.800 I suppose, but between sort of political factions, and therefore 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:27.960