Is the Tech Press Bad? With The Verge's Casey Newton

The Verge's Casey Newton writes The Interface, a daily newsletter about social media and democracy. He joins the podcast to talk about the tech press, Facebook, and the newsletter life. 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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• 0:45Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to a second edition of the Big Technology Podcast. This is Alex Kantrowitz, and joining us today is a man who needs no introduction, but we'll give him one, just for kicks. It's Casey Newton. He is the Silicon Valley editor at The Verge, and he writes a newsletter that you all probably subscribe to already, called The Interface. Casey, welcome to the show.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me, Alex. It's nice to be here.

• 1:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, my pleasure. You know, I think I got a lot riding on this episode. You know, Newton Nation is strong, and we're just launching, and I feel like if we don't deliver, if I don't deliver mostly, then, you know, that's sort of the end of this podcast. So hopefully, we won't mess it up too bad.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Well, I've brought a lot of, a variety of spicy takes and controversial statements that, you know, will hopefully allow this episode to succeed.

• 2:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, let's start with the question that's on everyone's mind to begin with, which is, is the tech press bad?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  No, the tech press is really good. The tech press, I think, has done probably the best work of its life collectively over the past four years. I feel like I have a much better understanding of the inner workings of the biggest technology platforms today than I've ever had. And it's because of the incredible work that that so many people are doing around the country and the world. And in fact, one of the reasons why I wanted to start my newsletter was I was just reading so much good stuff every day and was feeling frankly overwhelmed by it and felt like it might be useful to gather the best of it into into one place and kind of point out what I thought was interesting. So I think the tech press is really awesome.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  I think there's a kind of

• 3:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why do so many people hate it then?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  So I think there's a separate but related question, which is about the health of our kind of information ecosystem more broadly. And there I do see some trouble spots. I think there are sort of like three algorithms that have reshaped the American press in ways that we are just now starting to confront. You have Google and Facebook, which can serve up this incredible fire hose of traffic to publishers so long as they cater to the ever shifting whims of that algorithm. And that has just resulted in a lot of really cheap to produce content, like, you know, what time is the Super Bowl and John Oliver destroyed

• 3:48Speaker 01

  this industry last night, here's the clip. And all of that stuff is like mostly harmless, but it has robbed publications of their individual identities. And so every website is just a version of every other website. And I think that has kind of undermined trust in the press generally, because there's just kind of like a sameness to it. And then the third algorithm is the Twitter algorithm where in a world that is full of calamity, only the sort of noisiest, most scandalous, most outrageous stories break through. And because that's where reporters are hanging out all day and where they're flogging their stories, I do think that that has kind of led all of us to underline the elements of scandal and outrage in everything. And that has, you know, kind of a wearying

• 4:33Speaker 01

  effect. I think there's just kind of scandal and outrage fatigue. But I also think it is undermined trust in the press because most people's experience of us on Twitter is a bunch of, you know, snarky bastards who are constantly pointing at outrage and scandal. And so maybe people have less of an idea of who we are, what we stand for, what our principles are. And so I just think like the collective like force of those three algorithms has like warped people's experience of the press into something very different than what their experience would have been like 20 years ago.

• 5:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, typical tech journalist take you just go ahead and blaming the algorithms versus the people. I get it. But yeah, let's talk a little bit about that outrage thing because, you know, I think one, I mean, look, I defend what the tech press is doing. I agree with you. I think the group of folks that are on this are doing great work. Try to put myself in the shoes of some of the people in the tech industry. What they see is simply just like a group of people, you know, trying to take them down and then playing that Twitter outrage cycle. So do you see any truth to that? And, you know, how do you think that perception needs to be corrected? Or how does this change?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  I think that people who work at tech companies don't know what our principles are and what we stand for, right? Like, I think if you are reading the average story about Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, unless you have a personal relationship with that reporter, you might not know sort of what that reporter's goals are. You know, in my experience, most reporters' goals are to speak truth to power, to to hold power to account, to find wrongdoing. And so if there is a story that is negative, I feel like it is usually coming from that place. You know, but it's also the case that these platforms are really complicated and frankly I think we don't know how we feel about questions like which posts on the internet

• 6:21Speaker 01

  need to come down and which should stay up. And so that results in coverage where one day you're beating up on Facebook for leaving up too much hate speech and the next day you're beating up on them for taking down too many legitimate ads. And so I think if you're, if you're an employee at that company, you might look at those stories and think this publication has no idea what it thinks about anything. And so I'm just going to tune all of it out as noise. Right? So that's why I like, one of the things that I did with the, the interface last year was I just wrote a page that was basically like, here's how I see the world, you know, here are the things that I'm concerned about. Here are the questions I'm trying to answer. And I've just found it invaluable and kind of setting my own audience's expectations and guiding me day to day as I'm writing about these issues.

• 7:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so how would you say if the, if the main problem is showing folks what reporters stand for, how do they better convey how this works?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  So I think every reporter has to answer it in their own way. My thinking on the subject has been really influenced by Jay Rosen, the NYU professor.

• 7:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. You have your own statement of like your, where you're coming from on your side.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's worth more reporters considering doing something like that. I think it forced me to confront issues like, you know, what, what is my own ideal content policy? Right? Like, what are the things that I'm most concerned about? And then it allowed me to follow those questions down a path. And so, you know, my coverage can be somewhat incremental, right? I'm kind of hunting the same set of subjects every day. Um, you know, I think to the extent that more reporters can do that, I think that will build trust. But, you know, I think, I think there are things that reporters can, can do. Um, but I'm hesitant to say too much of that because I really don't think the problem is the reporters.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  When you look at who has the power in this situation, it is typically the reporters who are clinging on to their jobs for dear life and the tech companies, which are growing ever more powerful by the day. So to suggest that this is a problem that the journalism industry, you know, needs to solve, like at the level of the reporter, I think is a little bit wrong. I do think we need to talk about the shape of the industry and what it incentivizes and what publications incentivize. And then maybe talk about like some different things that we can do there.

• 8:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, and you know, it is, it's interesting because your answer sort of mirrors what a lot of the critics say. And maybe I'm going to get this wrong, so you can help add some context around it. But they also think that, you know, they tend to point to it as like a business model issue. The reporter, I mean, I know this is sort of a ridiculous criticism, but they say, you know, the reporters are trying to hang on to their jobs and they're, you know, mining outrage for clicks.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and you know, that's not true, you know, most reporters I know have no idea what their, their traffic was. Um, and, and are not directly financially incentivized to go get more traffic. Um, you know, at the same time, it has been my experience that particularly at the digital, uh, you know, media properties of the past 10 years, but also the legacy subscription publications, reporters there are typically, um, you know, you sort of read the press releases that these companies put out and they talk about their traffic regularly, right? It's, and they're, they're always talking about their reach, they're always talking about their scale, right? It, it is built into their business to reach the most amount of people.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  And the internet has a lot of winner take all dynamics. And, and so I do think that, that shapes the conversations to some extent. Now, at the same time, every writer since the dawn of time has wanted to be read, right? Like we all want an audience.

• 10:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, more than a business model thing, it might just be a status thing or what you're pointing towards.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  We'll say more about that. What, like, what do you mean?

• 10:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  So maybe this is a little different, right? Okay, reporters definitely want traffic on their posts, right? But, um, one of the things we know that these, uh, platforms do is they reward people, uh, by, you know, it gives people an opportunity to pursue status. And it rewards them with things like, you know, retweet numbers and follower numbers. And it's like this game, and, you know, we know what sells on the platforms, which is generally what you mentioned, outrage. And so, you know, I think that like the criticism would be more well pointed if it went less as to the business model and more to like, you know, the reporters know that they're, and I mean, I agree with you, like there is power imbalance. And, you know, the job of journalists is, uh, is, is a, is a good one, right? And I don't think any company is entitled to positive coverage at all.

• 10:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um, but I also think we should be introspective sometimes. And so for me, like, there's this idea of like, yeah, I mean, The criticism would be better pointed at reporters trying to pursue status by stoking the outrage that they know will generate the types of retweets that, you know, writing measured stories might not.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe I'm wrong there.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I feel like we're also falling into a trap that this conversation often does, which is like, everyone is terrified to name an individual reporter or an individual story, right? It's like, we always want to keep this discussion at the level of like, the overall ecosystem and like, very few people are willing to come out and say like, you know, this particular investigation was a load of BS. You know, that's not always true, but I think it's helpful when you can, you know, sort of be really specific. You know, I was, I've, it's funny, I've been thinking about the, like, all of these issues a lot lately and like, like, what, what is it exactly that we're talking about? And, you know, you hit on something which I know you've, you've written about, which is just

• 11:57Speaker 01

  kind of the, the weird power of the retweet. Like, I am constantly shocked at what people will do just to get more retweets, right?

• 12:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's amazing. It's totally amazing.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Which has like, no financial benefit to them. Like, yes, maybe you're gonna get more Twitter followers over time, but, but people will do anything for a retweet. And so that does shape all of the takes in the direction of being really noisy and really spicy. And, and so, so I've been thinking about like, what have we lost? Because everything is so noisy and spicy. And like, some of the things that I think about are like, when I read investigative reporting, so rarely does it have a sense of proportion, right? An investigative report will never admit that what it has found is anything less than worthy of a Pulitzer, right?

• 12:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right. This earth shaking investigation.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yes. Meanwhile, we read on. Everything we found is just absolutely gobsmacking, right? So little of the reporting I read these days has a sense of humor. And like, I get it. Like, times are dark, but times have been dark for a long time. And like, I used to read stories that were just kind of funny. And like, I, I never do anymore. And then the third thing is just, I crave humility in my reporting, right? I crave a sense of what the reporter doesn't know, what they still want to find out, right? A sense that you don't have all of the answers. And, and honestly, I think a lot of those things can just be really hard to deliver when you're doing, you know, beat reporting for a major daily or a big digital site. And, and where I think blogging has actually really excelled.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  And, you know, to the extent that newsletter, newsletter writing is just kind of the evolution of blogging. I think that's one reason why I've been so drawn to it is I, it feels like a place where I can restore some of those things.

• 13:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And, and look, I mean, I think you look at the other side and some of the biggest critics of the tech press have like the thinnest skin I've ever seen. And so it just seems, sometimes it seems like, you know, just so extreme. These conversations are so extreme where there is a desire for measured nuance conversation about the way we approach topics. And, you know, the way that the industry should look inward. But for whatever reason, and maybe it is what you mentioned, these algorithms, it always seems to explode. So I do hope that there is a way to, you know, find, I mean, I don't think the tech press should count the industry, but I also think that like something about this where like, you know, everybody see, well, not everyone, but a good chunk of the tech industry is now seen to discount reporting.

• 14:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then reporters sort of, you know, getting entrenched in their own spot doesn't seem very healthy to me. So I'm, I'm hopeful that, that this doesn't last forever.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  I agree, but well, but also like, if you talk to the people who are running comms at the big tech companies, or like you talk to the CEOs, they're still paying very close attention to the press. And they've identified reporters who they think are fair critics and they're listening very closely to those fair critics.

• 14:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  You can, the press can still absolutely nudge these companies in a better direction and they're doing it all the time. And, you know, like, like anything else, there really is a pyramid of quality in reporting. Some of it is better than others. And I think a lot of the criticism gets aimed at the worst stuff. And people just don't spend as much time talking about the stuff that is like really good and fair and useful.

• 15:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and there's some very, very good stuff out there. Okay, so we'll settle the question of this first segment. Is tech reporting bad? We're both going to go with no here. Although like, you know, I mean, I don't know. Hopefully this, this discussion adds some nuance to folks who've seen this stuff. You know, play out on Twitter and are like, what the, you know, what's happening there? I don't know if I should swear on the podcast yet. We're just in our second episode.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  I was gonna ask you if I could curse or not. I said BS earlier.

• 15:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, let's, let's curse. Let's just have at it and see.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Curse.

• 15:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  We'll leave it for our second segment because that will definitely involve some swear words. We're going to talk about Facebook when we come back right after this. This episode is brought to you by App Point. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, 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 App Point 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.

• 16:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's how more than 28,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence. So innovation scales without scaling risk. App Point, the unifying trust layer for AI. Head to apppoint.com to see how enterprises deploy AI with confidence. Learn more at avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast. That's avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast. All right, we are back here with Casey Newton, who writes a terrific newsletter that you should all subscribe to. Just kidding, you're probably all subscribed to it already. It's called The Interface and it's run out of the verge. And it's one of my daily must reads and the analytics. Casey's back and we'll prove that out. So you can fact check me after this.

• 17:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's really a great, great newsletter and has an amazing following. I think there's what, like 20,000 people that are on it, more than that?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes. And we'll talk about that a little bit more in, in our third segment. But for this segment, we're going to talk about Facebook. Obviously, it's a company that you and I cover pretty closely and have for years. And I feel like our generation of reporters sort of grew up using these tools, like when they were first introduced. And, you know, we've seen it evolve all the way through. We're also like fairly close in age with Zuckerberg, who started it when he was in college, which has given us this sort of interesting perspective on what's going on with the platform. But yeah, I'm just curious, you know, feel free to riff on that if you want for a bit. But let's just start at the top. What do you think? What's your view of the current state of Facebook?

• 18:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  It seems like the company receives the most amount of hate, probably, you know, all other hate for the tech industry kind of measures up almost to what Facebook gets in aggregate. Yet it seems to be chugging along pretty well as a business and people use it. So what would you say the state of Facebook is right now?

• 18:18Speaker 01

  I think I sort of have two ways of thinking about that. You know, the first and the one that I am always struggling to keep in mind is that Facebook is so big that it is always going to be a thousand different things at the same time. Right? There's like 500 places where it's doing something really cool and interesting. And there's 500 places where it's doing something really scary and in need of intervention. And part of what I'm trying to do is to develop a sense of how do we weigh the good versus the bad on Facebook? And is it the case that this company can be a positive force for good in the world at like a really grand scale that that silences, you know, some of the doubters or at least,

• 19:02Speaker 01

  you know, addresses more of their concerns? Or is this thing, you know, warping more than just the media? Right? Is it kind of the like a dark mirror to our society that is warping what we see and kind of tearing us apart? So that's why like that question is really intractable for me. And it's the reason why it is the most fascinating of all the companies to me is because like teasing that apart, you know, will just never stop being fascinating for me. I don't, I don't think, at least not in the foreseeable future. So that's kind of the, the high level, like, you know, Facebook is kind of a million things.

• 19:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, what's your answer to the, to that big question? Like right now, what do you think it is?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  I don't know, right? Because the like, the Facebook answer would be, well, you know, we provide a voice for people and we enable all of these conversations and that's so important. And, you know, look at, look at all of this that we're enabling. And, you know, by the way, we're also helping a lot of small businesses, you know, every day. And then I just look around the world and I see the rise of authoritarianism and fascism and the spread of, you know, right wing extremist ideologies like the anti-vaxxers and the Boogaloo groups and QAnon, you know, all of which have been all over Facebook and which have grown aggressively on Facebook. And it's like, I have a really hard time weighing those things in a positive

• 20:24Speaker 01

  direction, right? So I'm sort of, I'm deeply skeptical of it. The other thing too, is just, Facebook is like, almost uniquely unaccountable company in that the founder and CEO has majority control over the board and no one can really meaningfully intervene if Facebook does something that they don't like, other than sort of mount a public pressure campaign and try to change Mark Zuckerberg's mind. And so many-

• 20:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  We know that rarely works. Yeah.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  It, I mean, I would actually argue that it works on Facebook more than people give it credit for. I think they're way more responsive to public pressure than an Apple or an Amazon, for example. But, you know, the fact that they sometimes do what the public wants is not a replacement for actual accountability. And I think one reason why you see so much frustration with Facebook is the same reason you see so much frustration with YouTube and with Twitter, is the sense that these things are so powerful to the way that we communicate and live our lives online. And yet, you and I really have no say in how any of them operate. And Congress, you know, which should be playing an active role in regulating

• 21:33Speaker 01

  these platforms, really only as of maybe this month, seems like they even understand the platforms, like to any great degree. So there's just been a huge lag there. And so I don't think we should be surprised that people are so frustrated with, with life under these platforms.

• 21:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and so I guess I guess you'll punt on the answer about whether it's a force for good or bad in the world. I mean, it's interesting, right? Because I mean, I'll just give like my personal perspective. I was gonna ask you, and I definitely want to hear what you have to say. I was gonna ask you, like, you know, whether it's a plus or a minus in your life. And I was thinking about like, the ways that I use the services and enjoy them. But I'm also just like, is this responsible for like, the fact that there is a movement in the US that's anti-mask? And how much of that has actually helped amplify sort of the resistance we've had to common sense measures, you know, for the coronavirus? So I guess it is a complicated question.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Sure. And also, Facebook operates in a lot of countries where people are wearing their masks, right? So, you know, if why isn't it having the same effect everywhere if it's so simple, right? That's like, often their answer when people say, well, you know, what what is Facebook going to do about polarization? They're like, if you look around the world, like, countries are polarizing at different rates. It's really hard to kind of pin this on us. But, you know, just as a reporter, I do think you have to keep an open mind. There are a million reporters on Twitter that just tweet Facebook is bad all day, every day, because it gets a lot of retweets. And so that's just kind of like a whole crew of people. I think sometimes they unearth interesting information about the company. But as a reporter,

• 23:06Speaker 01

  I've just I've never been particularly invested in certainty, right? And you have to be careful because you can let yourself get played by the companies, right? If they're constantly sowing doubt in your mind. And, you know, you can sort of find yourself accidentally carrying water for them sometimes. But I'm just a big believer in the in the world being complicated. And so I think, you know, given that Facebook is a thousand things, if I had like, reduced it all to like, a one sentence feeling, I would probably be sacrificing a lot of like, nuance and intellectual rigor.

• 23:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's good. That's what we're hoping for here on this podcast. So I appreciate you answering that way. Do you think so? But you also asked yourself, you know, eventually, do you think Facebook can get to a place where like, you're going to see the positives without the negatives in society, which is actually something we can, you know, try to predict with some with some level of, I won't say certainty, but it's, you know, it's either possible or it's not like, is it a function of the platform? Like, can the platform be fixed to an extent where it can start incentivizing and creating some of the good things without, you know, as much of the bad as we see? So do you think that that's a possibility?

• 24:14Speaker 01

  I'm not honestly that optimistic about it just because I feel like we are now far enough into Facebook's history that if we were going to see that happen as just kind of a naturally occurring feature of the platform, we would have seen it already. You know, now maybe some feature comes along, maybe Facebook groups evolves in such a way that it really does breed this, I don't know, like civic mindedness and like a pro democracy movement within the United States. But we just haven't seen that very much so far. And of course, you know, in the world of Facebook, the the posts that most people are seeing in groups are the ones that are getting the most engagement. And we know what kind of posts those tend to be.

• 24:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  So, so I am, I am, I guess skeptical that that is going to be the case, you know, but I also hope I'm wrong.

• 25:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's just go speculation mode, which we can't write in our stories, but we can have some fun with on a podcast. All right. So if we think about the state of the platform, all this bad stuff is being generated by it. It seems like you don't have much faith that it will be this, you know, force for good without mitigating the bad. Yet it still chugs on, right? It continues to do incredibly well in the stock market. I was looking at the market cap since Cambridge Analytica and since even the the tech hearings that we had last month, and it's just shot up and seems like, you know, it's a company that can't be stopped. It won't be stopped by Congress. It won't be stopped by the stock

• 25:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  market. It won't be stopped by users. And at a certain point, you have to think that there's a feeling inside the company where it's like, you know, the haters came at us and they missed. And now we can do, you know, whatever we want. So where do you think this goes?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think Facebook used to have that attitude much more. They loved telling the story of how everyone thought the news feed was a bad idea, but they stuck by it after they launched it, even though a lot of people hated it. And it wound up, you know, becoming one of the greatest money printing presses in the history of business. And I do think that that led to a lot of hubris. I think more recently, they're looking around the world and thinking, oh, right, like they saw TikTok emerge as a legitimate competitor. Then they saw it get shut down a bunch of places and realized that if TikTok had got shut down in India, then so could Facebook and all of its apps, right? So. I think they're looking around the world feeling very anxious and that's why over the

• 26:40Speaker 01

  past year they've gone on this sort of funny like pro regulation campaign where Zuckerberg's writing op-eds being like, you know, we need new rules for the internet.

• 26:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Regulate us, please.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And of course, it's like, you know, we want to be regulated, but but only on our terms. So I think they're trying to, you know, shape regulation in a way that benefits them. And of course, so far, you know, we haven't seen any regulation pass at all.

• 27:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and the regulation is basically like, please just tell us what to take down. We're sick and tired of actually doing it ourselves.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, the, yeah, like the, the, I mean, and it's like, it's really depressing, honestly, because I don't think we need Congress to regulate like which posts should be on Facebook, even though that seems like mostly what Congress is interested in. I think the question is much more about like market power and competition, you know, and maybe some rules around like how quickly you should respond to hate speech, you know, and that sort of thing. But, you know, I generally want Congress to not impose a bunch of speech restrictions on internet platforms.

• 27:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right, because you also just, you don't know which party is going to be in power. And then we already, I mean, I feel like our democracy is already in shaky enough shape. And now you have, you might have Congress, members of Congress saying, actually, all those posts supporting our opponent or harming us, you know, now need to be off. And where does that end? Do you think the Supreme Court is the fact that they're allowing an independent body make some of these decisions, is that good?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm a big supporter of that because it goes to accountability, right? If there is an external board that gets to adjudicate some of the most high-profile cases on Facebook and it doesn't all come down to Mark's decision, I think that's a good thing, right? It's hard to think of another case in American business where a company just devolved power like that back to the user base. And given how little accountability there is on Facebook or any of the platforms, I think we should be rooting for it.

• 28:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  So another question I have for you is, and this is kind of a touchy one, but I'm just gonna ask it anyway, because I think it's important for people to hear. The intent of the people inside the company, do you think that their intent is good? Or do you think it's bad? Because I feel like one of the, you know, favorite hobbies of the armchair quarterbacks on the internet is saying, you know, they're evil or they're actually not. So you've spent a lot of time with these folks, I mean, I have as well. And I'm gonna, kind of curious, like, what your read is, is there, are their intentions good?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  I think that their intentions are similar to like, most people who work office jobs in 2020, you know, where it's like, there is some, uh, interest in the mission. There's a lot of interest in like, salary and benefits. Um, and there's a lot of interest in what is this doing for my career? You know, the, there's a really interesting discrepancy between the internal and the external conversation around Facebook right now, because the external conversation is a lot of like, are these people good or evil? Like, what are they doing to the, to the world? And like, the internal questions at Facebook that like Zuckerberg is getting during his weekly Q and As are all about like, remote work, how long is it gonna last? Who's gonna have to go back to the office? Like, who's gonna get their pay cut?

• 29:58Speaker 01

  How much is my pay cut gonna, you know? How much is my pay gonna be cut if I move to Omaha or whatever? And I think it's like, it's important to just recognize that we expect Facebook to kind of save the world to some degree, even though it is just a giant business where people post texts and images. And it's hard, I think, for a company to do the things that we expect of it. Now, that's not to say that Facebook doesn't have a lot of terrible externalities that it has, you know, often ignored over the years, um, you know, to its shame. But I think those are more the product of indifference than a bunch of, you know, evil scientists trying to like, rig the world for Trump and, and Bolsonaro.

• 30:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And I will say that like, they also, I mean, the stuff that you're talking about, right? The way that their day-to-day work is structured, this is also created by a set of incentives that they set from the top. And like, one of the things that I've spotted is that like, it still seems like growth is too big. Of an issue inside that company in terms of the way that you get promoted and you get your your salary changed. Although I know they've tried to pull it back a little bit, it seems like it still motivates the company too much. So maybe it is just, you know, instead of this, you know, group trying to change the world and mold it in the way they want, just a group too obsessed with growth. What do you think about that?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I think, you know, you could make that argument about like every American business, right? Is like driven by having to deliver these quarterly results, even though, you know, the issues we want them to work on are at times like multi-year or even decade-long initiatives. And, you know, what Zuckerberg would say is, yeah, I know. And that's why I have made total control. I maintain total control of this company, right? Because I don't want to be subject to, you know, what Wall Street thinks that we should do. So, you know, it it is tricky. But, you know, one thing I will say is, to the extent that, you know, sometimes I do feel sympathetic for for Facebook, because

• 32:03Speaker 01

  I do feel like, you know, sometimes people are asking it to solve issues that, you know, no corporation is really well suited to solve. But at the same time, they did absolutely bring this problem on themselves in the sense that they they put their best people on growth, right? They had this world-class team of people whose whose sole job was to grow the company. They did an incredible job. Like, they grew an entire civilization to call their own. And, you know, so they do have to own all the problems that came with that.

• 32:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. All right. Let's say you're running the company for a day. Actually, no, I'm going to give you a year. Would you run it exactly like Zuckerberg is running it? Or would what would you change?

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 32:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know reporters hate being asked this question because our job is to ask people questions and sort of try to synthesize it and talk a little bit about what's happening. But it's such a fun question to ask reporters. So I'm just gonna toss it to you.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Well, here's what I would do because here's the thing I'm most curious about is I would spin off WhatsApp and Instagram. Like, I would just spin them off into public companies, you know, maybe Facebook keeps a stake in them or whatever, but I would reintroduce competition into the marketplace. I would shrink the size of the platform. I would give my employees kind of more, just sort of the opportunity to police a smaller space and to master it, right? Maybe a billion people are going to be easier to manage than than 3 billion. And then just kind of go from there. So like, that's something that I've long wondered is what would happen

• 33:40Speaker 01

  if you reintroduced competition to social networks? And I think it's worth a shot.

• 33:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think that, by the way, I think those are great ideas. Do you think external competition, you know, might end up doing in the company? I mean, Zuckerberg has talked about this. I think there was the, you had broken the news of the Q and A, and then they decided to livestream one of their Friday Q and As with Mark, and they said something like, you know, how is Facebook going to end or something like that? And he must have said, he said something to the extent of, and I know there's a lot of somethings in here, not recalling 100%. But basically, he said, time will come after us, which is essentially his way of saying, there will be external competition that will come in and destroy Facebook. And I'm curious if you think, is that, is that the way it ends? Like, is there a real threat of external competition for that company right now?

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, so I wrote a column about TikTok recently, ahead of the antitrust hearing, and I was just reflecting on what a gift it had been to them, because in the middle of a hearing about competition, they had a legitimate competitor, right? Like, somebody that was actually growing really quickly, that was probably stealing time away from Instagram. And like what a gift that was that they could talk about. And I was talking to this president at Facebook that said like, yes, that's true. But also like now we have to compete with them like it's hard like we have to go figure it out and like we have reels. But you know, it's not a given that we're going to be able to knock off TikTok unless you know, Trump just deletes it from the earth.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  So I think that, you know, Zuckerberg has always been the most paranoid of the the big Silicon Valley CEOs. And I basically mean that as a compliment. I think he's just like really attuned to competitive threats. And he's read his Silicon Valley history. He knows what happens to companies that are not alert to the people who are coming after his lunch. And we've also seen so many social products come and go over the years. We've seen, you know, so many people just get tired of whatever novel, you know, social mechanic has been introduced. That like if you're running a social network, you always have to keep pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

• 35:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right. It's so exhausting. I mean, yeah.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  It's completely exhausting.

• 35:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  The the nature of social media users is they're so fickle. I mean, if you think about like some of the hit social networks that have come out. Even in the past, you know, five, six years, like it's unbelievable. Think about HQ Trivia, for instance, which everyone was like, okay, everyone is going to be on their phones at five. For the quiz daddy to ask his questions. And this is the next new thing. Goodbye, Facebook, right? And Facebook even said, we're gonna start to clone it. Now HQ Trivia is a distant memory.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah, these these things come and go now. But and so that's why, you know, what I focus on is, okay. So that so we know that these things rise and fall, but you know, what underhanded tactics is Facebook using to sniff out new competitors, to stuff them out, to clone them, to buy them up, right? That that stuff feels like at least some of it should not be fair game. You know, Ben Thompson has this idea that social networks should not be allowed to acquire other social networks. Like as proposed regulations go, I think that one is pretty elegant and would do a lot to kind of restore some balance.

• 37:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay, let's do a, um, let's do a, a Facebook lightning round, um, just to end this segment. I haven't written any of these down. I'm just gonna shoot from the hip here.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 37:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh, does, does Facebook get regulated in a meaningful way within 10 years?

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Within 10 years, yes.

• 37:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wow, okay. Um, is, is Zuckerberg still the Facebook CEO 10 years down the road?

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Ah, let's see. At that point, he'll have been running it for like...

• 37:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  25 years.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  25 years? Yeah, yes. I think 10 years, I think yes. I would say five years, definitely. I think 10 years, it gets fuzzy. I think, I think that there could be a shot that he's like running CZI full-time in, in 10 years or kind of doing something more in the philanthropy world.

• 37:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mm-hmm. Is, is TikTok a meaningful threat to Facebook within five years?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, dude, we don't know if it's gonna exist in October, like...

• 37:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is a hot take lightning round, yeah.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  But it, that's like, that's basically like, guess what Donald Trump is gonna do? And Donald Trump doesn't know what Donald Trump is gonna do.

• 38:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's true. Well, I mean, I think the key is just to create this TikTok reality show and let it go as long as it can. Up until November, so we forget about all the people dying. But anyway, it's a conversation for another day. Um, what else do I want? Oh, Sheryl Sandberg, is she gonna be there within two years?

• 38:21Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I can't figure out why Sheryl is there now.

• 38:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Same. Maybe she likes running the business?

• 38:28Speaker 01

  She says she does, but like, does anyone believe her? She seems constantly exasperated by everything that happens inside of Facebook. It is unclear to me, like, like, to stay at a job, you need to be deriving some pleasure from it, and I just, I can't figure out like, what Sheryl likes about her job right now.

• 38:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, uh, that's a good question. We should ask her. Uh, okay. Uh, 20 years from now, uh, which company's bigger, Facebook or Apple?

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, I think Apple has the leverage. I think, I think Apple, the, the competition, Apple, uh, sorry, the competition issues around Apple are really significant and serious and no one is paying attention to them right now. And if they are, you know, ignored for the next five or 10 years, then, then I think, you know, Apple is, is going to grow into an even bigger behemoth than it is. And as you know, as you know, it's already way bigger than Facebook.

• 39:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's like three or four times the size, uh, on Facebook's good days. Uh, all right. Last, last question in our lightning round, then we'll go to break. Um, what are like the three social apps you use the most, uh, in order from most to least or?

• 39:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, from most to least. Uh, well, I mean, Twitter is definitely number one.

• 39:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, same here.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  With a bullet. Um, so yeah, that one's definitely the most. Um, I've been spending more time on Instagram, I would say, since quarantine. I'm one of those people, um, have been using it in like increasingly Twitter like ways too. Like it feels like stories are becoming way more about like posting memes and, and information than they ever have been before. So that's interesting. Um, and then, uh, I, I'll just say it. I've been on Tinder a lot during quarantine because it's boring as hell when you're single, uh, in the pandemic. So.

• 40:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and are you moving? Well, now, now, I mean, we're gonna go to break, but I got like, are you meeting people like at a social distance? Are you video conferencing? I don't want you to get yourself in trouble, but I feel like social distance is okay. So.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, um, I am, I am open to that, but I have not yet found the person who, um, has felt like it's, it's been worth taking that, that step with.

• 40:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So a high barrier.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Springs eternal.

• 40:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right. That's right. Okay. Cool. Well, uh, super interesting answers. Um, we'll take another quick break and then we'll talk about life writing newsletters for our final segment, which will be a quick one. Um, but we hope you stick around and we'll be right back after this.

• 41:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here with Casey Newton. He is the Silicon Valley editor at The Verge and writes this great newsletter that we've been talking about over the course of this discussion called The Interface. You should check it out. It's quite a good newsletter. Definitely keeps you posted on everything going on with regard to Facebook and democracy in our world and now the pandemic. Let's spend our last few minutes together, Casey, talking a little bit about newsletter writing and how it's differed from being a traditional reporter, whether you like it, whether you recommend it to others. So we talked a little bit about the reason for founding the newsletter. We won't get too deep into that. Basically, I think you mentioned it was to curate some of the best stuff going on in

• 42:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  a world filled with really good tech journalism. Seems like you've enjoyed the experience, though. I feel like you're having the most fun that I've seen since we've known each other now.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It's the best. Writing newsletters is the coolest thing that I have gotten to do during my time in journalism, both the thing itself and the stuff that it has enabled. There's just no question it's been the best thing that I've done for myself and I think for the work that I've been doing.

• 42:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's it enabled? Because that's an interesting way to put it.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  So, I mean, a couple of things. Before I started it, I was a Facebook beat reporter who I don't think was particularly known for breaking a lot of big Facebook stories. I was just a person on the beat and I wanted to break more stories. And I thought, well, if I want to do that, then I need to more closely identify myself as a Facebook reporter. So in the early days of the newsletter, it was probably like 70, 80% Facebook most days. And so that helped to get the attention of all the other Facebook beat reporters, but then a lot of other Facebook employees. And because I had all of those people's attention, I started to get better tips than I was getting before. And then some of those tips turned into big features.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Last year, I did a series about content moderators in the United States.

• 43:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  That was massive. Yeah.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  And and it all came from the fact that I was starting that I was writing this newsletter and people had associated me with a beat really closely, right? Like when you're writing a newsletter four or five days a week, when I started, I was doing it five days a week. You know, people can tell that that you care and so they just kind of want to to shape that conversation. And so, you know, over the course of doing it for three years, I think, you know, more and more, I've been able to just identify myself as a social networks reporter. And the more you do that, the more interesting people want to talk to you.

• 44:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what's the back and forth been like with readers? Like when you send out your newsletter, how often do you do you hear back?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  I mean, I hear back every day and, you know, not in like enormous numbers. Like I would say, you know, maybe five or 10 people will write in a day. But the thing that I the thing that I love about it, though, is people just respond with things that you would never leave as a comment on a story. You know, like you think about the comments that you used to read under, you know, news stories, most, I feel like most sites have disabled comments at this point.

• 44:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, because it's all telling you how terrible you are. I had once I had someone tell me not to quit my day job and it was when I was freelancing, thinking about quitting my day job. I was like, okay, well, that was wise advice commenter. But that's one day I'd like to meet her and be like, well, I mean, you might have been right, but anyway.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, people will just reply like, good job, or I really like this, or, you know, this has become my favorite newsletter, just like, just a really nice encouragement. And it's less about, you know, wanting to debate stuff as it is just about kind of offering encouragement. But of course, you know, we do get people who write in and say like, hey, you're way off base about this. And because I'm writing four days a week, I just got to put that in the next day's edition. I do a section called pushback, where I just basically write like, here, here is what people are telling me that I'm wrong about, which, you know, going back to our earlier discussion, I feel like is a trust building thing, you know, something else that the newsletter enables is for me to build trust, because when you're, when you're reading me write

• 45:35Speaker 01

  four columns a week, you get a sense of where I'm coming from, what I'm interested in. And I'm not doing as much shooting off the hip, I'm not, you know, clamoring for your attention by writing the most dramatic possible version of everything. I'm just like trying to like, lower the temperature a bit and say like, okay, what is like, what, what are smart people saying about this, like tricky tub subject?

• 45:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right. And it is interesting. I mean, I kind of gave you some shit earlier about the way that. Technology incentives change the way the discussion and the way stories might be presented. And it really is totally a different world when you're writing for an audience in the inbox versus, you know, sharing stories on Twitter and hoping they'll get retweeted to bring you an audience.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, people don't want to be screamed at in the inbox.

• 46:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  You know, like, the inbox has enough drama. Like, I always think, like, I want my newsletter to feel, like, interesting, but I also want it to feel like an oasis of calm, even though, like, I'm often writing about really difficult subjects. But I, like, I never try to make people feel panicked or outraged. Like, I always want there to be a sense of, like, there's a next step, like, here's what's coming, you know, here's some context, like, just, like, trying to bring that sense of, like, history and perspective to stuff that, you know, you sometimes don't get in other stories.

• 46:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it's, I mean, it's terrific, and it really is, I mean, like, having written a newsletter for a while, I mean, I was writing one at BuzzFeed, but now that I'm doing it full-time, I just think the back and forth is totally amazing, and I love the way that you phrase that, an oasis in the inbox, because, you know, in this, like, pretty crazy, unmeasured world, I think people really appreciate a little bit of measure in the stuff they hear and some nuance. And, you know, you've certainly provided it and been an inspiration in your writing of the interface. And, yeah, you should, you should definitely branch out, make this, make this an independent company, but that's not it. All right, Casey, thank you so much for joining. It really was a pleasure having you on, and, you know, I would love to have you on as

• 47:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  a consistent guest as we move forward with this thing, you know, your time permitting. So just wanted to say thank you, and we hope to see you again soon.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me, Alex. I would come back anytime.

• 47:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, well, thank you, everyone, for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit the subscribe button or give us a rating. I want to thank the whole team that's helped make this, this podcast possible. We have a huge team, basically, on par with the whole NPR studio. No, just kidding, but I want to thank Nate, who's doing all the production on this thing, and the team at Red Circle, who host and have made this possible and taught me a little bit about what podcasting is all about. So thank you, and thanks to everyone for listening, and we hope to see you again soon.

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