Why Elites Are Losing Trust — With Vivian Schiller

Vivian Schiller is the executive director of Aspen Digital, former head of news at Twitter, and former CEO of NPR. She joins Big Technology Podcast for a discussion of why the public distrusts elites. This conversation takes place in Davos — as the World Economic Forum conducts its annual meeting — and dissects its controversial initiatives such as the "Great Reset." Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss the latest with big tech and Joe Biden's tech agenda. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversations of the tech world and beyond. And we are coming to you this week from Davos in collaboration with the Web3 Foundation and Unfinished. Our guest today is Vivian Schiller. She is the Executive Director at Aspen Digital, the former head of news at Twitter, which is fun and we'll talk about, and the former CEO of NPR. Vivian, welcome to the show.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you for having me.

• 1:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's great having you here. We're going to get into everything happening at Davos. I think this will be an episode that will focus mostly on elites. Before we get into it, I want to let folks know that I'll be continuing this discussion on my LinkedIn page like we do with each conversation. So if you have questions or feedback, come on over there. There'll be a specific post about this episode and we look forward to hearing from you. So Vivian, this is interesting. It's our first time in Davos. Right now, the Meeting of the World Economic Forum is going on. It's an annual Meeting of really the world's elites, business leaders, corporate leaders. We had never seen it before. It's a great time to discuss our impressions of it. I'll start. It kind of gives me the willies to be here.

• 2:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  It feels like those in power are finding ways to continue to stay in power. And that's what this meeting is all about. At least it looks, that's what it looks like from the outside. Neither of us, I think, have been led into the main discussion. What do you think?

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, that's the thing is, you know, people have asked me or, you know, my colleagues at home going, how's Davos? What is it like? And my answer is, I actually have no idea. I mean, I've been here for a few days now, but it's hard to really put my finger on what the experience is, partly because, like you said, I am, I am not one of the anointed. I don't have the fancy white badge that gets me into the Congress Center where the, where the WEF meetings are happening. So, you know, we are amongst the scrum, walking up and down the promenade where, which is more like a trade show. You know, that has taken over this mountain town road than anything else. So I don't, I mean, is that the Davos experience?

• 3:20Speaker 01

  I don't know. I've never been here before. That said, it's been fun to run into a lot of old friends I've, and to meet new ones. So it's been interesting in that sense, but it, it's a little weird.

• 3:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And the forum has come under fire, at least in the past few years, for something that they called the Great Reset, which is this agenda that they've put forward, basically saying that they want to take advantage of the opportunity that COVID gives them in order to reset. And some of the things that they talk about, I mean, here I have some of it from their agenda here. So they say, to achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies. From education to social contracts and working conditions. And they also say the future of, they're trying to influence the future of state,

• 4:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  global relations, the directions of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global economy.

• 4:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, the World Economic Forum has come out and said this message wasn't received well. Well, no kidding.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, really.

• 4:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  It does, it seems, seems a little inappropriate for gathering. I mean, I understand the desire to improve society. But the way that they phrase it really is, in the words of some, you put saying the quiet part out loud. Where, you know, you ask why people are turned off by groups like this. And it really is, I think, a fact that they say out loud that they're trying to influence like some of some things that you would never want, you know, groups like this try to, to influence social contracts, societies and economies. I mean, what, what, and it's influential people here that are trying to do it.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I, I mean, there's two big problems, two, two categories of problems. One, my God, the elitism is just, you know, and I say this as, you know, you and I are arguably, or many would look, look at us as the elite. I'm looking at this group going, wow, really? I mean, it's the ultimate ivory tower and sort of the hubris of suggesting that this small group of mostly white men, that's changing a little bit, but I think not much can sort of, you know, pull the strings to try to affect, you know, populations around the world and, and control them is, is, you know, problematic. And the other thing is, and I guess these two things are related.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  It's sort of flying in the face of a, of a backlash to what, and I'm, if you're not looking at me, I am using air quotes, globalists, you know, the rise of autocracies around the world. The anti-democratic forces, including in the United States.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  You know, they, they feed on the, the World Economic Forums of the world and say, this is exactly what we're fighting against, you know, this sort of ethno nationalists that are on the rise.

• 6:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it is, that's absolutely correct. And it is interesting that the forum continues to, you know, seem to conduct business as usual with with little self-reflection, except for this. I'm going to play a clip from one of the recent meetings. And this is, if there are folks here who are realignment listeners who've come over through there. This is from Breaking Point. So shout out to Saagar and Jettie for highlighting this clip on a recent show.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  At Davos a few years ago, the Edelman Survey showed us that the good news is the elites across the world trust each other more and more, so we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that in every single country they were polling, the majority of people trusted that elite less.

• 6:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Pretty unbelievable. Elites trust each other more, but the people in the countries they're coming from are trusting them less. Why is that?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Well, for all the reasons that we've been talking about. I mean, there's so many, look, you know, there are many brilliant minds around the world trying to dissect the sort of this trend that we're seeing happening around the world, which is sort of an anti-global perspective, a more nationalist, a more ethno-nationalist agenda in so many countries, which frankly reviles expertise, evidence, knowledge and education.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  I mean, I see this so starkly in the United States with the rise of the far-right. Sorry, I'm immediately jumping over there. And it is, you know, a lot of the message is, "Don't listen to these elites, listen to us, we're the populists." It's a very anti-democratic movement. You know, the elites, I guess, are not helping the matter by sort of staying above the fray in many cases, but it's really sort of scary what's happening in so many places.

• 8:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and so you hinted at it, but I'm curious what you think it fuels, what fuels these movements? Now, of course, like, you know, some of it is messaging, but in people's lives, they must feel, like, I was actually looking on Twitter right before you jumped in, and Klaus Schwab, who's the head of the World Economic Forum, is trending. I'm like, oh, what, did he make a speech or something? Like that and it's filled with hate for him and people must be seeing something in their everyday life and everyday lives that are not making them trust the people who are running governments and the people who are running corporations, the Davos set. What do you think that is? What's going on there?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Well, there's a lot of things that are happening simultaneously. Economic inequality, a global pandemic, the climate change. The, as I, as I mentioned, sort of the rise of, of, of populism. And a lot of it being fueled by very effective propaganda, I will call it propaganda, coming from many corners and fueled in large part by many social media platforms. So it's this toxic brew of actual, real life challenges that are, and then are platforms that are tapping into our passions

• 9:43Speaker 01

  and fueling our outrage. It's, it's, it, this is a problem in every country around the world and it leads to serious, real life consequences.

• 9:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  So is the answer then that, you know, these elites really need to clean up, clean up the stuff that gives fuel to, to some of the anti-elite?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the interesting thing is if you look at the, at the most recent Edelman survey, which you, which you referenced, which is such a valuable tool. Yes, that, you know, people don't trust elites, but if you look at sort of the categories of, do people trust government officials? Absolutely not. Do people trust, you know, journalists and media? Sorry for you and me, but absolutely not. The interesting thing is the highest level of trust in terms of category actually is corporate leaders and companies. I'm not necessarily talking about the, you know, the people who are gathering here in Davos, although frankly, many of them are here. But the, the fact that companies, I guess, maybe by default, because what other institutions are left

• 10:43Speaker 01

  for you to trust, have, have, and maybe because it's, you know, these companies are part of people's lives or, you know, Members of the public work for these companies, they are employees, that there is a higher level of trust and it actually gives corporations an opportunity to use that trust for good. This is something I've been talking about a lot here when it comes to all kinds of societal issues. That's different, let me just be really clear, that's different than what I'm talking about in terms of the World Economic Forum. I'm talking about in there, in the way that they communicate with their employees, in the way that they communicate with their, with their public, their customers, how they spend their money.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Don't forget, corporations are the economic engine for social media, so what are they spending on? How much money are they giving to Meta? How much money are they giving to other platforms? You know, they have tremendous power, so.

• 11:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  I took your question in a slightly different direction, but I wanted to make the point.

• 11:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  It is a good point, and it's something that I think about a lot, and we can talk about tech regulation and stuff in the second half, but it's something I think about a lot when it comes to regulating the tech companies, because you look at the approval, there's no denying it, you look at the approval rating of Amazon and companies like Google, they're like second to the military. Then you look at the approval rating of journalists and members of Congress.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  No, it's terrible.

• 12:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it's at the bottom of the barrel.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's really unbelievable. But I'm curious why you think that is, because aren't the law, so, like, I wonder if people are actually directing their ire about what, because the economy is a natural product of what the corporations do, and the economy is one that is creating winners and losers in society. When things like CEO pay, for instance, where it's multiple times, I mean, CEO pay, how many, you know, median salaries can you fit into, you know, average typical pay that's going to a CEO? And of course, they earn the money, but the disparities are really some of the fuel.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  But Alex, you're mixing up logic with feelings. Just like an elite, you're such an elite, you're trying to use evidence and logic. And actually, the sense of, you know, for better for worse, when people feel trust, it's not necessarily the logical consequence of the thought process that you just went through. And it's easy to see why people like in the United States, you know, have such low trust for members of Congress and the media. First of all, members of Congress, you know, it's just become, you know, Congress has become a more and more of a toxic place. And because Congress is so polarized, there's very little getting done. It's hard to feel good about, no matter what party you are, to feel good about what's happening, or as

• 13:25Speaker 01

  a case may be, not happening in Congress. And when it comes to the media, don't forget the word "media" is very broad. So the media includes evidence-based, you know, fact-based, sourced journalism, but it also includes a lot of junk, frankly, or propaganda, or things that your cousin posted on Facebook as some kind of, you know, piece of evidence. And to most people, all of that is the media. And a lot of it is untrustworthy, a lot of it is, you know, stirring up emotions, a lot of it is just, you know, propagating and

• 14:05Speaker 01

  just downright falsehoods. All of that is media. And because our society, not just in the United States, but everywhere, is so polarized, people are feeling very tribal about their media. So when they say, "Do they trust the media?" They trust their own media, they don't trust the other guy. But that's what's bringing those numbers down.

• 14:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And I'm not saying, you know, they should trust us, they shouldn't trust them. I think that there's, I mean, you know, maybe that's the case, but I think that there is, there is reason across the board. And I am, again, like, I think that you're right. Where is this feeling coming from?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Is my... Is my question.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, go ahead.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  No, I just wanted to say one other thing. We were talking about a lot of the real world problems that are feeding into this emotion and then being amplified by social media. We talked about economic disparities. We talked about the pandemic. We talked about climate change. We also didn't talk about, I should have mentioned, and I want to just make the point here, that, and this is so true in the United States and I know in other parts of the world, racism, I'm just gonna call it what it is, you know, a lot of times people use "sugarcoat" that expression, but there is still tremendous racism, homophobia, antisemitism bubbling

• 15:21Speaker 01

  below the surface that is now being given greater voice and horrifyingly greater acceptance because there are platforms where it has been allowed to propagate. So, that is also, without a doubt, one, you know, feeding into frustration around the world, particularly for underrepresented communities, and understandably so.

• 15:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  It is also interesting, in the US in particular, where, you know, the Democratic Party says that they're against that, or trying to fight against, you know, the tide of racism, you have more and more Latino voters who are moving towards the Republican Party.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  What do you think about that?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, uh...

• 16:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe the message isn't landing.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Maybe the message isn't landing.

• 16:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I also think that, I'm gonna add one more thing, there's, it's an attitude issue too, in my opinion, where like oftentimes people feel that there's, you know, the elites are, like the stuff that I'm reading about, the Great Reset, that, you know, an organization would have the audacity to talk about shaping all these important things. It doesn't come top-down, it does come bottom-up, and there is a smugness with some of these organizations where they feel that they actually have the answers and, you know, that must be dictated to the bottom-down versus have this come up democratically and what's the answer. A nationalist can say, "These people who have been promising you democracy don't really care about it. What we care about, and we actually are speaking to you."

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you don't have, you know, what do you have to lose at this point?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. The far-right and the populists are quite good at messaging. That's a fact.

• 16:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's talk one, you know, a bit more about corporations because there's been this move towards stakeholder versus shareholder capitalism. Shareholder capitalism is all about trying to make the most money you possibly can. Stakeholder capitalism, which has been advanced by the group here, is all about companies getting more involved in social, social issues. I wonder if that's working because, you know, I think that both the far right and the far left are skeptical of that. And, and I was reading a piece about it earlier, about this great reset, which said that, you know, stakeholder capitalism is giving corporations more power over society and democratic institutions less. What is your view on it?

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, look, you know, first of all, you know, the companies that we're talking about ultimately are beholden to their, no matter, yes, putting aside stakeholder motivations, they are, you know, beholden to their share, they are legally beholden to their shareholders. So that's number one. So you can understand why a company might be reluctant to take a stand on a controversial issue for fear of alienating their customer base. So that's completely understandable. On the other hand, I think more and more CEOs don't have a choice but to take a stand on, on, on certain issues. For starters, before you even talk about customers and before you even talk about, you know, member, you know, politicians, let's talk about the employee base.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  The employee bases of these companies are, are more and more empowered to speak up and to express themselves to their leadership about what they demand from the company that they work for. I mean, look at Disney as sort of the, the, sort of the poster child for this issue. The CEO tried to avoid getting embroiled. Disney, of course, you know, it's, it's most important property, Disney World, is in Florida, where there have been a number of extremely controversial pieces of legislation, state legislation being introduced, including about, you know, banning the teaching of, of, you know, various forms of, of, you know, LBG, LBG T.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Q, um, uh,

• 19:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  The Don't Say Gay Bill.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Reality, Don't Say Gay Bill, thank you, that's what I was looking for. Um, and Disney tried to just not comment, saying, you know, you can understand the motivation, I completely get it, we're just gonna stay out of this, you know, we're a big part of the economic engine, we have a lot of employees in Florida, and so the CEO was silenced. Um, but the employees wouldn't stand for it, and absolutely demanded that Disney speak out against the Don't Say Gay Bill, which they did, and now, uh, they have become the absolute bullseye target for Governor DeSantis to say, you know, Disney is this woke company, and we're gonna take away all of their, you know, their economic benefits that they get

• 19:57Speaker 01

  from the state, never mind that the citizens of the state would then have to pay for it, and, you know, y- you can't win, but, but you also can't stay on the sidelines.

• 20:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it's so crazy, I think, for a Republican governor to now talk about corporations needing to bend to government will, or the government will enforce its power, and it goes against any conservative value.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  The hypocrisy is just sort of stunning, and, yeah, and, and shameless.

• 20:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I, I think that, you know, I've given it a lot of crap at this point in the podcast, but I do think that this idea of stakeholder capitalism is important. We have had, um, a long period of time where companies would just do the ruthless thing because that's what they felt that they had to do, based off of what our society wanted, and that we, there's this, there was this crazy belief that if you were to do the most, the thing to maximize shareholder value, then society gets better, directly as a result, where clearly that's just not the case.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  And I, you know, maybe you can call me Pollyanna, but I, I do see a lot of companies that actually are rising to the moment, and, um, you know, we'll see how far it goes, but, uh, I think that there is a recognition that actually sort of values-based leadership. Can be lead to the best business outcome. We'll see how how far that stretches as we move into, say, at least to the United States, a post Roe v Wade world where companies are going to have to make decisions about whether they're going to potentially violate state law by paying for employees to leave the state to get an abortion. I mean, it's going to get very, very tricky. But I do see company,

• 21:34Speaker 01

  a lot of companies doing the right thing, you know, even on the global stage.

• 21:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it's also the way that you, we, at a certain point in our society, we actually believed in like building a strong middle class through the way our corporations were to treat employees. Now, I won't, I won't dispute that we are living in the wealthiest moment in time, and actually, the median household is doing better now than they have in the past. But there was this attitude back in the day where like Ford, for instance, would want to pay its employees enough so that they'd be able to buy the cars. And now we have corporations where that's, that's really not the case. And, you know, maybe stakeholder capitalism isn't that you grind your frontline workers into the ground to the point where they have medical issues, they can't, they can't pay their bills, they're

• 22:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  on food stamps, and actually is paying, and maybe this is me asking too much of our economy right now.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Well, that's why you see a rise.

• 22:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Paying the living wage.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Well, we see the rise of, of unions forming in many, in many pockets around the country and the United States.

• 22:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  It is interesting because we're actually starting to see that in the tech world.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Where for the first time, an Amazon warehouse has been unionized.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Although soon after, one that was nearby, lost.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I'm trying to, you know, for my reporting, discern whether this is a movement or a moment. And it does seem that Amazon's targeting of Chris Smalls, who was the union organizer in Staten Island, actually was a key reason why that warehouse, or fulfillment center, as they like to call it, unionized. I wonder, do you think that this moment can happen? We're seeing some unionization pushes inside Apple. Do you, do you think this moment can actually be the launch of something? Or is it just an anomaly? I tend to think it's an anomaly. Maybe I'm wrong.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Well, unlike the WEF elites, I don't have all the answers. I'm so sorry, Alex. I really don't know.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  So but it's been interesting certainly to follow. A lot of media organizations are are unionizing too. It's interesting that journalists are unionizing at greater levels in the United States. And that matters not just, I mean, it's a small industry compared to other industries. On the other hand, these are the people that tell the stories.

• 23:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I was at BuzzFeed News when there was the middle of a unionization push. I don't, I don't, I mean, I, I don't know if it was successful because, you know, they did unionize, but the newsrooms being cut in half. I wonder how you think that will, or more than half since, since the heyday. How do you think the fact that the media business is so tough to make it in? How does that kind of square with these unionization pushes in newsrooms?

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Well, unionization doesn't necessarily guarantee that your company is going to be successful and be able to continue to pay you. It, it, you know, that when it's done right, a union, just a, a, a, a union movement just make sure that you are paid for the work that you do. But of course, you can't protect your job in the long run. And a lot of these, you know, the BuzzFeeds of the world, that sort of middle strata of, of kind of early startups, a lot of them are, this is a whole other podcast that we'll do another time, but, you know, are really are failing now. It's sad.

• 24:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes. Vivian Schiller is here. She is the Executive Director at Aspen Digital, former head of news at Twitter. Why don't we talk about Twitter and other big tech companies on the other side of this break? This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Copilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf.

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• 25:53Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 26:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Vivian Schiller. Vivian, I want to say thank you for coming into my conversation with Nick Clegg. It was great to have you there.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Quite interesting.

• 27:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, we've talked about it afterwards. So I want to break down on some of what he said, but I also am curious, you know, I mentioned this in the interview with him, and it's kind of been my favorite stat to cite recently, but Facebook was worth a trillion dollars last summer. Now it's worth about half of that. How do you think this economic downturn is going to change the way that we look at, the way these tech companies operate?

• 27:35Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm skeptical that it will. We'll see. You know, even with all that, even with all those losses.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  You know, the numbers we're talking about are still pretty astronomical.

• 27:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  I, I, you know, I'm, I'm sorry that these executives have, you know, lost a few, a billion of their net worth, but I, I just wonder if it's really going to impact, you know, unless things really fall apart, it's really going to impact their, their strategies.

• 28:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so you've been, you've run news organizations before.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Indeed.

• 28:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  You're a journalist.

• 28:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  We talked, Nick, Nick and I talked a little bit about how Facebook pulled, shut down basically news site pages or blocked their links on Facebook when Australia tried to make it pay to run those links on its site. What did you think about that?

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, first of all, Nick Clegg is, is really not lacking in, in, in confidence.

• 28:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's true.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  That was the, that was the, the, the, the biggest impression. You know, I found, I'll come back to your comment in a second, but he really sort of, you, you did a great job of, you know, presenting him with, with all of the, all of the accusations that have been leveled against them, many of them true, and he kind of waved everything off and sort of dismissed it as a lot of grumbling. But I have to say, I, I felt pretty angry when I heard him say, when you were asking him about, you know, the subsidies and, and look, there's a, there's a lot of problems with that Australia law, that's a subject for another day.

• 29:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Kind of like a Rupert Murdoch thing.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But the fact that he said that he, he, he, he said that he felt that it wasn't Facebook's place to subsidize an industry that is, and I'm, I'm, this is not an exact quote, but directionally correct, that is getting so much more value from them than they are. So that news organizations are getting so much, getting all the value from Facebook and giving none of it in return. I found that deeply offensive and also.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Completely untrue. Um, I mean, uh, you know, this is why, this is why, uh, it, it, it, you know, the, the Facebook has not treated news organizations well. Um, it has not treated, I think, the public, uh, well, when it comes to, um, making sure that, um, fair and accurate information is, um, amplified and false and harmful speech is not. And the notion that Facebook is giving all the value to news organizations and getting none in return is just utter nonsense.

• 30:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And he did mention that Facebook has been pulling back on news in a big way. I think he said maybe 3% of content on Facebook is news. And that's not really a user-generated decision, that's a Facebook algorithmic.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Decision.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  I wonder if it's better, and, yeah, I wonder if it's better for the news industry and Facebook to just, you know, have a divorce.

• 30:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Cause if, it would basically mean, okay, news organizations are gonna lose traffic, but it was traffic, it wasn't audience largely. Um, and then Facebook can get on with doing the friends and family thing.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Well, there's two issues with that. One is societal and one is economic. The societal issue is if there is not quality news organizations represented on Facebook feed, what will continue to be there are, uh, lies, rumors, innuendos, not evidence-based information. So, and, you know, Facebook is very popular, so I would be concerned if there was, you know, no counter whatsoever to a lot of the, the nonsense that proliferates on Facebook. So that's the societal issue. The economic issue is that, you know, Facebook and other platforms are, you know, hoovering up most of the advertising revenue. Um, no, I'm not blaming, uh, uh, uh, unlike many, I don't fault the platforms for the

• 31:29Speaker 01

  fact that they have built a better advertising vehicle than, say, newspapers. Um, but, uh, the consequences for, uh, for news organizations to be absent from that, from that dialogue, uh, you know, it doesn't, it's gonna just exacerbate the, uh, the economic problems of news institutions.

• 31:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and I always, for my, for my, you know, mini news business, I always wonder, like, how much should I engage with the platforms or not? And... I am wary of doing business with Facebook. I am doing business with LinkedIn and I'm pretty happy about it, but.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Well, LinkedIn's, LinkedIn is not Facebook.

• 32:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Almost none of these other platforms are Facebook.

• 32:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you know, Facebook does have this history of, I mean, it's experimental as a tech company. You have to experiment and sometimes that will mean putting money towards something and then pull it, pull it back. But I feel like the news, the news industry has had the rug pulled from under its feet so many times that it's like.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Live video.

• 32:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  That's the entire future. Oops.

• 32:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  A few months later, never mind.

• 32:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  That lasted for a half second.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  You're talking here also about TikTok and how we've.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's actually kind of interesting how news has started to evolve on TikTok, especially news about the Ukraine war.

• 32:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's your view on Tik? I mean, the ascent is unbelievable. I just did a report talking about how people now spend more time daily on TikTok. People who use TikTok now spend more time daily on the platform than the average user on Facebook ever did. Which is just astonishing.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  That is astonishing.

• 33:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's your view on, on the rise of TikTok? And, and yeah, I'd like to hear your perspective on how it's going to be used for news.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Well, they, they built a pretty compelling product. So, you know.

• 33:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you use it?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Power to them. Yeah, yeah.

• 33:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  I use it. I use it. I delete it. I use it. I'm so addicted to it when I use it. And then I'm like, I can't do this. I have to actually do some Netflix instead.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a lurker though. I'm a lurker. I have, I.

• 33:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, I don't do the dances.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  I watch some videos. Maybe another life.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  No, no, of course I, I'm a lurker and I, and I too really like it. One, you know, what I would like to say, well, it's necessary for me to be well versed in TikTok because of my job. But the fact is I find it very entertaining. It's really fun. And yeah, it is valuable for news and we've seen a lot of, you know, even for, you know, we've seen a lot of really interesting, creative, user-generated

• 33:48Speaker 01

  quality news and information on TikTok. You know, the famous TikToker who starts off with a makeup tutorial and then sort of to try to, you know, turn away everybody other than the women that, that this TikToker is trying to reach and then talking about the plight of the Uyghurs. You know, that kind of thing is, is, is really, really compelling.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  That said, you know, what we're, in fact, the panel that I'm moderating here in Davos is gonna, in a little while is going to get into this. We're going to talk about how in Russia, TikTok has actually been.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  You know, and you can, and depending on who you talk to, either inadvertently or on purpose aiding and abetting the Russian propaganda efforts inside Russia. And you have to wonder if a company that is controlled by Beijing, what those motivations are. So this is not, do not forget the Chinese ownership. That is a really, really important part of the TikTok story that hasn't fully played out yet.

• 34:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I think their cultural power is fascinating. We've seen it in the US where from reports that I've read, they actually had made some mistakes early on, taken down some content in the aftermath of George Floyd's death. And then kind of turned up the volume on Black Lives Matter, which ended up sending lots of Gen Z kids out into the streets during those protests. There's also the famous example of, I don't think this was TikTok manipulating the algorithm, but how TikTokers saw that Donald Trump was holding a rally and had this meme where they began en masse, buying tickets, leading the Trump campaign to think that there was

• 35:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  going to be a massive turnout. And turns out that no one showed up and it was extremely embarrassing for the campaign, which had overflow capacity set up for TikTokers that never planned to show up. It is great cultural power and I do wonder, like you do, about what happens when China, which is the government has shown not only a willingness, but an enthusiasm to go and tinker with content and tinker with algorithms.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Well, these are private companies. Yeah, these are private companies. They control the algorithms. They are protected by the First Amendment to, and by Section 230, to moderate their content as they, as they see fit. So, you know, buyer beware.

• 36:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  How do we know? How do we know if they, would it just take a whistleblower if they put their thumb on the scale?

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Well, that's, you know, one of the things that we've been advocating at that Aspen Institute as part of our Commission on Information Disorder is greater transparency from the platforms to researchers and academics who can actually, the more information they have, anonymized content, we're not talking about giving personal information to academics and researchers and journalists, but be able to track how stories move and to be able to track what's, you know, been algorithmically amplified and what hasn't and why across all of the platforms. This is vitally, vitally important. So that's one of our strong recommendations for that very reason.

• 36:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  You think they'll ever follow through with that?

• 37:00Speaker 01

  There's actually some movements around transparency. It's not as controversial as other, you know, other suggested, you know, changes to laws like, you know, around Section 230, for example.

• 37:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm going to now connect this discussion to a little bit of what we talked about earlier. I'm going to go back again to what Saagar and Jedy was talking about with the WEF. He says billionaires are good at one thing. It's the reason why they, you know, made so much money, but it makes them think they're qualified to do anything. That brings us now to our next platform, which is Twitter and Elon Musk's pursuit of the company. Now, it's fascinating back and forth, you know, is he going to buy it, is he not? The more Tesla stock goes down, the less likely I think it is to happen. But I want to ask you this. So you worked there as a head of news. Twitter was always telling us as reporters that people sort of underappreciated the cultural value and it wasn't reflected in

• 37:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  the share price. Is it ironic that Elon Musk, who fully did appreciate the cultural value to the point that he wanted to go and use it, is the one who actually saw that argument through and made an offer to buy the company, which they accepted?

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. First of all, anybody that tells you they understand what's going on in the mind of Elon Musk is selling.

• 38:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't think Elon even knows.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  No, I don't know. And I have no idea. All I can, you know, I can barely follow the bouncing ball. So, you know, I don't know what his motivation is. I mean, it strikes me just from where I'm sitting that, you know, Twitter is his favorite toy and he's a rich guy, so he wants to buy the toy company. That's always the way it's felt to me. Really?

• 38:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because he does, I mean, he, he, it does fit a pattern, though, because he does start these companies with his views, ways that he can improve the world, for SpaceX trying to, you know, get human civilization on more than one planet, or Tesla trying to move us to electronic vehicles, Twitter, I could see the ideological.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Hmm, I, I, I, I think it's a little bit different. First of all, he started those companies, and his motivations around Twitter are suspect. I don't, you know, he says he wants to, yeah, he claims he wants to improve the world, but first of all, in all of his public pronouncements about Twitter, what he has demonstrated is ignorance about the way Twitter operates, around content moderation, around what, you know, he, he throws out the term free speech, well, who, everybody's for free speech, of course, now, you know, that's motherhood and apple pie, but when you get, when you dig a little bit deeper, he, he's just, he's, he's all over the place.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  He doesn't seem to have a vision for what it is he wants to fix at Twitter, he doesn't seem to have a vision for how Twitter works, he doesn't seem to have, understand how Twitter makes money or doesn't make money, and now he seems to be getting cold feet about the deal altogether. One thing that seems apparent, too, is that he, you know, he seems to be getting a lot of adulation for, you know, things that he said about Twitter from the far right, and now it feels like he's playing more and more to them, so that's, that's a little disturbing.

• 40:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mm-hmm. What do you think happens?

• 40:08Speaker 01

  I don't know, I, I-

• 40:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think he wants out that deal.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it seems like he wants out of the deal, but I kind of love that the Twitter board, you know, we can, we, you know, I have my own complaints about how the Twitter board has handled a lot of things, but I do like, right now, that they're playing hardball with them, saying, what do you mean pause? This, there's no such thing as a pause, this deal is on, you need to fill your end of the bargain, so we'll see what happens.

• 40:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  It does feel strange to me, I mean, the employees, we, we talked about this last week, actually, when I was on CNBC, but the employees cheered the fact that the, the board and the company leadership is holding steadfast.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  However, I mean, maybe they'll get a payout, but however- It's likely that there's going to be mass layoffs if he comes in and.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  I honestly, I think Twitter's in trouble either way.

• 40:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  If he comes in, yeah.

• 40:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  If he, if he walks away, that share price is going to fall through the floor. I mean, Parag will remain the CEO and I think he's done a terrible job. He hasn't shown any vision.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  He's fired all his executives.

• 41:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  And he's fired, he's either fired or they've left.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  He tells us he wants to go in a different direction with the company, but we don't know which one it is.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Well, this is a sad thing about Twitter. It's always had such leadership problems. You know, from, from, from the very beginning, just read Nick Bilton's book. I, you know, I was so naive. I, Nick Bilton, who was my old colleague when we were both at the New York Times together, wrote a book called Hatching Twitter about all of the drama and the leadership issues in the early days of Twitter. And I remember when I was getting ready to join, this was in 2013, the book came out and I thought, oh, lucky me, I'm joining the organization, the company after they've sorted out all of these issues. It's all behind them. Well.

• 41:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Nope.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  You know, you know, as a narrow way to say, she would find out that the issues were not resolved.

• 41:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And I actually thought, so I covered the company extremely closely for, for the five years that I was at BuzzFeed and I still cover them closely. I thought that Jack Dorsey did a decent job. They were shipping product under him.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  He was the best. He was the best of the CEOs.

• 42:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  He was good. And it's so odd to see him now kind of throw that whole company under the bus.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  I know, right?

• 42:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  And encourage Elon to take it private and, you know, everything that, that, I mean, of course there's, he, I, maybe he felt that ideologically, the employees took a turn and he kind of couldn't control it anymore.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it is so bizarre.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  I know. When he came in, you know, I, when I was there, he, he was not CEO. He came in as CEO after I left and the CEO, he, he was a vast improvement over the previous leadership that was in place when I was at Twitter. And so, yeah, I thought he did, of, of the various CEOs that Twitter has had, I thought he was one of the best, but yeah, I don't know what's happened to him.

• 42:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's odd. And the business, actually, he left the business in a good direction.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 42:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Up 37% the revenue, 2021 over 2020. We'll see what happens in 2022. It's going to be a mess.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Joe Biden's tech agenda. We heard a lot about the government getting involved in technology under Trump. I don't think I've heard a single thing from the Biden administration about wanting to do anything when it comes to tech, except for maybe the disinformation governance board. And Biden had been pretty outspoken about like wanting to break up Facebook. I mean, he has bigger problems right now. But what do you think's happening there?

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Well, in fairness, they have a pretty aggressive FTC right now in the Biden administration. And Lina Khan has not had her majority of commissioners until quite recently.

• 43:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  She just approved the fifth one.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I think we may see some actions. I think if anything's going to happen, you know, let's, let's watch the FTC. I think that's going to, that's going to be interesting over the next, you know, over the next two plus years and maybe beyond. We'll see. But yeah, the White House itself, yeah, hasn't really made a lot of moves. It's got some heavy hitters, but not made a lot of moves. And the, and the, yeah, the information, I always get the name wrong, the information.

• 44:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Disinformation Governance Board.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Disinformation Governance Board was a, was there, the, now that I understand what the intent is, it actually was quite a good idea. In fact, it, it maps to another one of the recommendations from our Commission on Information Disorder, which is to have a coordinating body, not a new agency, not an overlord, but just a coordinating body to know which parts of the government are doing what, which was the intention. But they really messed up the rollout. First of all, Disinformation Governance Board, you know, I'm not the first to say, sounds downright Orwellian.

• 44:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  It does. It sounds like, I mean, it's a terrible name.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  And so they put out the name and then they didn't explain what it was. The clearest articulation I heard of what it was intended to be was the briefings that they held once they decided to end the Disinformation Governance Board. And the, you know, and the would be head of it, Nina Jankowicz stepped down. They kind of hung her out to dry. You know, she, she either chose not to, or, or, or was not, you know, was not given permission to make statements about what their intention was. So, you know, it was just really, really unfortunate kind of cell phone.

• 45:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  But what was it supposed to do?

• 45:20Speaker 01

  It was supposed to be, it was supposed to be an internal, um, clearinghouse is not even, that's not, that's even going too far. A, a, a, a body that would be aware of the various research that is being done, um, on the outside and the inside of government around, um, around, information disorder and information flows. It was not going to be dictate anything. It doesn't, didn't have any power or control to affect, um, any acts. It was supposed to be a place where, uh, you know, a, a, a, a hub that understood what various parts of government were doing. And that is still needed. And now I fear it'll never happen because, you know, they're not going to want to go down that road again.

• 46:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  What various parts of the government were doing in regard to disinformation research?

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, research, because, you know, the State Department is involved, um, with certain, you know, areas of this, the OSTP, the FCC, the FTC, you know, the NTIA, you name it, the whole alphabet soup. There are various, uh, agencies and institutions that are, you know, either touch, you know, broadcasters, touch the platforms, touch, uh, you know, are either aware or engaged with various, uh, information outlets, um, domestically and abroad. But there's nothing nefarious about it.

• 46:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  And this is something that every government has done. It's, you know, it's the government. You, I mean, it's their, it's the federal government and to be aware of what commercial entities are doing and how information is tracking and how that might or may or may not cause harm to citizens is one of the responsibilities of federal government.

• 46:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's interesting because we do have the First Amendment. And so of course, there's no, the government can't force stuff to be taken down.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. And I, but I have not, look, I'm not here to defend, I'm not part of the government. I'm not here to be their spokesperson or defend them. But I have heard not one inkling of a suggestion that this was about government oversight over speech or what anybody is saying or even what the platforms are allowed to do or not do, um, in terms of their First Amendment rights to regulating speech.

• 47:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  So a lot of times, so we've spoken a little bit today about, um, disinformation, you know, lack of trust in, in news. Um, oftentimes this conversation misses one of the most important things, which I know you're aware of, um, and care a lot about. And that is the decline of local news. If you don't have a reporter in your town and all you're getting is the national stuff.

• 47:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  You can't trust, can't trust what you see because there's no relation to it. So, or you can, but it's just a lot harder. Where, so where do you see the, the direction of local news going in, in the US and maybe more broadly? I mean, right, we were, we have some interesting experiments. Axios, for instance, has things, is the next line of publishers that thinks that it can

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  get local news right. And I think they just acquired a local news newsletter in San Francisco. They did. And, and they're, they're moving this way. What do you think the state is there?

• 48:21Speaker 01

  This is a, this is a critical, critical issue, not just in the United States, but everywhere in the world. Study after study, over the course of generations, has shown that people trust their local news organization. People hate the media writ large, but they trust their local news organization.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  And so, and, and local news institutions are not just, they, they serve so many purposes in a community. They, they serve to stitch a community together, to, in terms of civic pride. They hold government officials or local businesses accountable just by showing up in, you know, whether it's in school board meetings or hearings or what have you, as a preventative measure against corruption. It keeps the local populations safe and informed about critical issues in their, in their community. And when these go away, what fills the void is either national news, which first of all is not as relevant to a local,

• 49:20Speaker 01

  you know, a, a citizen of a local community, but also tends to be more polarizing for a variety of reasons. But also what fills the void are what are called pink slime sites, which are basically

• 49:34Speaker 01

  propaganda outlets masquerading as journalism, or, you know,

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Nextdoor, Facebook groups, what have you, and local officials and local businesses. Nobody's watching the store. It makes corruption a greater possibility, and it can tear a community apart not to have that kind of critical institution. You know, some of the work that we're doing at the Aspen Institute is focusing on trying to think about local journalism as infrastructure, in the same way that you think about roads and bridges and libraries. How do we think about the information needs of communities and why that is an institutional infrastructural pillar, just like, again, you know, like I said, schools and libraries. It's absolutely important. There are some great experiments

• 50:23Speaker 01

  that are going on in not-for-profit journalism, particularly some wonderful work being done to make sure that communities of color and other underrepresented communities are being represented and able to tell their own stories and get that out in the world. And, yes, institutes like Axios are doing some great experiments, but overall, local journalism has declined. The business model of Yor has collapsed, and trying to cobble together the revenue to keep it alive is very, very difficult.

• 50:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  We talked a lot about problems. Why don't we end talking about solutions? I love talking about solutions on this show.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Oh, God. Do you have any?

• 51:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  No. That's why I'm asking the questions. But, yeah, I do want to hear if you think there's an optimistic path, where we end up in a society where we have, you know, less polarization and less divisions.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  So, I'm gonna, this is gonna be a really twisted way to begin an answer about optimism, but I want to just bring up the Russia-Ukraine war, which is horrific. Let me just be really clear how horrific this war is for so many reasons. But first and foremost, for the sovereign nation of the Ukraine that was completely brutally attacked, unprovoked, and has seen it's just so much death and destruction and a diaspora of its citizens around the world. That said, the fact that a democracy was so starkly attacked and its borders breached,

• 51:55Speaker 01

  I think in some ways shined a bright light on how important a democracy is, a democracy like Ukraine. And it has galvanized, you know, Europe in a way that I think people have really surprised people. You know, I look at the way sort of Poland has stepped up. Poland, that's had its own sort of autocracy issues. Now there is the defender of democracy in Ukraine. And the way support has come in from all over the world, and I would like to believe that it has raised an appreciation for why democracy is so important and worth defending. And if we believe that democracy is worth defending, that has a trickle down effect

• 52:39Speaker 01

  on so many of the other disorders that we've been talking about, the information disorders, you know, whether it's about, you know, the platforms, whether it's about journalism. I think all of those things can benefit from sort of a global sense of unity around this critical mission.

• 53:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I, while you're speaking, first of all, I agree. I think that it reminded me of Antonio Garcia Martinez was on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, and he said that like in his very red neighborhood, there's now Ukraine flags hanging outside. And there's this meme of people making fun of, you know, I support the current thing, which has like a person, you know, surrounded by like LGBT flags and Ukraine flags and saying, you know, these people are, there's no core to them and they're just for the latest social issue. And Antonio said, no, you know, this is not, you can't, this is not a current thing situation. It's about doing what's right. And it does bring so many people around together. Of course, wish it never happened and hopefully there's a swift end.

• 53:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it is a war is clarifying event.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 53:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's bringing some real clarification.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 53:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Vivian Schiller, thank you so much for joining.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's been fun.

• 53:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great having you on. All right, everybody. Well, we have this. This was a good tease because coming up on Monday, we have another conversation with Nick Thompson, who is the CEO of The Atlantic. We're talking all about trust in the media. So if you enjoyed this one, please stay tuned for that one. Thank you, Simon Hipkins from Key Pictures for doing the recording and the audio. We have, again, discussions going to happen about this episode on LinkedIn. So please check it out. We're also posting the videos on YouTube, my page, Alex Kantrowitz. So go check those out as well. That will do it for us. It's been a heck of a week packing the feed with three episodes this week, two coming your way next week, and then we'll go back to our regularly scheduled cadence. And if you've been following along, we really appreciate it.

• 54:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  If it's your first time at Big Technology Podcast, I invite you to subscribe. And if you're a longtime listener, we would love a rating. Rating goes a long way. So if you're willing to do that on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, that would be amazing. Until next time, take care.

• 54:59Speaker 03

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• 55:41Alex Kantrowitz?

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