Hard Fork: Elon’s Hidden Motives + A Meetup in the Metaverse

Today we’re bringing you an episode from the recently launched New York Times podcast, Hard Fork. Hosted by veteran tech journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton, Hard Fork is a rigorous and fun exploration of Silicon Valley’s already-emerging future — and its evolving imprint on the rest of the world. In this episode, Kevin and Casey discuss Elon Musk’s on-again-off-again – and recently on-again – interest in Twitter, as the billionaire signals once again that he’s buying the social media platform. What might be behind the change of heart? And what will the deal mean for employees and users? Casey and Kevin swap theories and predictions — and also step into the metaverse with the New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill. Hard Fork is produced by Davis Land. Edited by Paula Szuchman and Hanna Ingber. Fact-checking by Caitlin Love. Original music by Dan Powell, Elisheba Ittoop and Marion Lozano. Engineered by Corey Schreppel. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Shannon Busta, Julia Simon, Larissa Anderson, Pui-Wing Tam, Kate LoPresti, Nell Gallogly, Mahima Chablani and Jeffrey Miranda. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

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

• 0:04Ezra Klein?

  I'm Ezra Klein. This is The Ezra Klein Show.

• 0:24Ezra Klein?

  This is just a weird unsettled moment in the tech industry. If you go back five years, the big players are settled, the technology is settled, the companies are powerful, seemingly impenetrable. And then you go now, and the technologies are changing with Web 3 and AI. Tons of people hate the big companies. They're under actual challenge from regulators, from upstarts. The tech markets are drying up. There's a lot less money sloshing around. Big people are doing layoffs. People are trying to buy each other, sell each other. Elon Musk is buying Twitter, then he's not, then he is, and he's suing to get out of it, then he's not suing to get out of it. It's just weird. Where this whole industry is in five years and 10 years, it feels much less knowable than it did before.

• 1:10Ezra Klein?

  When I'm trying to follow this, I often follow it through the work of tech reporters Kevin Roos and Casey Newton. Kevin is at The New York Times. Casey writes the amazing Platformer newsletter. And they know this stuff backwards and forwards. They know the people, they do the reporting. And they're also funny and are able to explain things I don't understand to me without making me feel like an idiot. And so I was thrilled to learn that Kevin and Casey are launching a new podcast at The New York Times called Hard Fork, which is all about where tech is going and all about these stories that have become so strange. Our show is off today, so I want to take the opportunity to share the first episode of Kevin and Casey's podcast with you. In this episode of Hard Fork, they explore the latest twist in the Elon Musk Twitter deal. They take a step into the metaverse with New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill and much more.

• 1:56Ezra Klein?

  I'll let Kevin and Casey take it from here.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Kevin, can I tell you how I heard about the Elon news?

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Please.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  So it's morning in San Francisco. I had just finished at the gym. I go to my locker, I pick up my phone, and there's a text message from a producer at CNBC. And it says, can you come on right now to talk about the Elon and Twitter news?

• 2:22Speaker 01

  And of course, I think I haven't looked at my phone in 50 minutes. Like, what has happened?

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Did you do it? Did you do the hit, like, from the exercise bike?

• 2:30Speaker 01

  So I said, I'm gonna need a few minutes because I'm just leaving the gym. But also, like, you can't turn the camera on because I look like I've just done high-intensity interval training. And she said, it's fine. We'll call you, but can it be right now? And I said, no, I need two minutes to read tweets.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  So I spent two minutes reading tweets. And then I was on CNBC presenting my grand take that I have no idea what's happening.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Iconic. I love it.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  I'm Kevin Roos. I'm a tech columnist at The New York Times.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  And this is Hard Fork.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Well, Casey, I'm glad that you went to the gym. You know, got to take care of number one. And I'm also glad that you were able to give CNBC viewers the two minutes worth of analysis that you were able to do.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Well, speaking of getting through segments, Kevin, we've got a really fun show for you this week.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, tell us what we're gonna talk about.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Well, we're gonna get into Elon Musk, and not just the stuff off the top of my head. We've both now spent a couple of days actually talking to people inside Twitter, outside Twitter. And we think we've arrived at some conclusions about what's going on. We're also gonna talk to Kashmir Hill, one of the great reporters at The New York Times, about a bunch of time she recently spent in the metaverse. And then, coming up at the end of the show, it's gonna be the first-ever Hard Fork transparency report.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Should we play the Elon theme?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Yes, please. Let's play the Elon theme.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  All right. So this week, we learned that Elon Musk is apparently changing his mind again about Twitter, this company that he's sort of been in an on-again, off-again relationship with since earlier this year, which now appears like it's going to be a thing. Elon Musk, it looks like he's gonna buy Twitter.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Okay, so maybe we should start there. Like, is Elon Musk going to buy Twitter? Because, you know, there's been this months-long drama. They were supposed to go to trial in Delaware to settle this this month. And then we got this sort of string of news this week. So Monday night, Elon and his lawyers sent a letter to Twitter saying that, yes, he was prepared to buy the company for his original proposed price of $44 billion. And Twitter basically said, yeah, like, we also want you to buy us for $44 billion as you said you would. And then there was kind of some messy back and forth about delaying the trial and financing, whether these banks that had put up money for the deal were actually gonna

• 5:50Speaker 02

  come through with that money. And then on Thursday, the judge agreed to postpone the trial, which was supposed to start next week, and set a new deadline of October 28. And if they don't close the deal by October 28, then they will go to trial. So that's where we are right now when we're taping this. And the people that I've talked to are pretty certain that despite all of this sort of 11th-hour drama, this deal is actually going to close. And then it could happen as soon as next week. So Casey, what are you hearing about this? Do you still have doubts that this deal is going to close? Where do we stand now?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yes, I have all sorts of doubts about this situation that we're in. You know, I think it may be helpful to take a step back and ask ourselves, well, how do we get here? And if you rewind all the way back to April, news breaks that Elon Musk takes a large position in Twitter, is suddenly very interested in it. Then he joins the board. Then, a few days later, he leaves the board. Then, a couple of weeks after that, he says, "I'm gonna buy the company." And he signs a deal to buy the company. And then, like, a day later, he starts criticizing executives on Twitter. Then, a couple of weeks after that, he says, "You know what? This deal is on hold while I decide if I want to buy it." Never mind the fact that he already signed the deal. And then, he wages like a months-long campaign to get out of the deal, you know, accusing

• 7:18Speaker 01

  of Twitter of like everything short of war crimes, right? "Oh, it's full of bots and spam." And then, a whistleblower pops up and says Twitter's a national security risk. And Elon does absolutely everything he can to get out of this deal. And then, one Monday night, he says, "You know what? Actually, sure. Here's $44 billion." Like, there is such a massive gap in between the story I just laid out and the decision that he made Monday. And until I hear some sort of explanation for it, I'm very suspicious.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's definitely strange. And, you know, the leading theories so far that I've heard are basically, you know, he decided that he was probably going to lose his court case. And his advisors were telling him, you know, "You don't actually have a strong case to get out of this deal." He, you know, was scheduled to be deposed this week. And so, maybe he wanted to avoid having to appear in court, having, you know, more of his embarrassing, you know, text messages or whatever revealed as part of this lawsuit, and ultimately just cut his losses and, you know, buy the company as he originally agreed to do. Do you find that explanation plausible?

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Well, I think it could be an explanation. I'd like to know more about what might have come out at this trial, whether it took place this month, next month. What is he so desperate to avoid having revealed? We know that last week, some text messages between him and his other billionaire friends came out. Honestly, I don't think they made him look that bad. I think they made some of his friends look silly as they toed up to him and tried to see how they could be involved in the Twitter of the future.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  I agree. It was very embarrassing for Elon's friends, but actually like much more normal than I expected from him.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it was like, you know, Marc Benioff would be like, hey, what if Twitter was the conversational OS for Earth and humanity? And Elon Musk was like, I don't even own it yet. You know, like, that's not embarrassing for Elon Musk. But, you know, so, you know, maybe something else would have come out in this trial, but like Elon Musk, how many lawsuits has he been deposed in at this point? I can't imagine this was that terrifying a prospect for him. And here's the other thing that I think is interesting. So according to the legal analysis I have read, there were two potential outcomes to this trial. One is the judge says, you know what, Elon Musk, you're on the hook. You actually do have to buy Twitter and you have to pay the $44 billion, right? And so maybe if that's the case, then he just kind of wants to skip to the end. But there's this other possibility that she would have said, yes, you are liable,

• 9:44Speaker 01

  but you just have to pay the $1 billion breakup fee and then you can walk away, right? Because it would seem weird to force you to buy a company that you don't actually want to own. So if that's the case, wouldn't you be willing to roll the dice to save yourself $43 billion, right? What sort of damage to Elon Musk's reputation would not be worth the opportunity to hang on to $43 billion? So that's the aspect of this that I just find the strangest.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's worth noting, like, $43 or $44 billion, that's like a lot of money. It can be sort of numbing once you get into the billions. It's just like, all sounds like a lot of money. But like, even Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, his net worth is more than $200 billion most days. So even for him, this is an extraordinary amount of money. You know, he's lined up financing, you know, It's not all his personal money, but a lot of his personal money and his Tesla shares will be on the line. And so it also strikes me as very strange that you would spend months talking about how awful this company is, like basically trying to talk your way out of the

• 10:54Speaker 02

  deal. And then now you own it. And it's like, well, if I'm one of the banks or the, you know, the people who put up money for this bid in the first place, I'm going, well, was all the stuff you said about Twitter back then, when you were trying to get out of the deal true? Or is all the stuff that you're going to say now that you actually own it true? And why am I backing you if you think you just overpaid for something that is like irredeemably broken?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. Right? I mean, you know, again, he adopted the arguments of this Twitter whistleblower, Peter Mudge Zatko, and said, like, you know, Twitter is a national security risk. He's like, okay, but, you know, on reflection, I've decided to spend $44 billion to acquire this national security risk. Like, there's, there's such a missing piece here. So let me introduce another question into the mix. If you read the letter that he sends on Monday, his legal team does, it makes clear that he will close this deal, assuming that all the financing is still there, right? Because he brought in some equity partners and he lined some banks up. So what if this whole thing is just him playing for time, right? He gets out of this lawsuit

• 11:58Speaker 01

  that was about to start in a couple of weeks, and he then kind of runs out the clock. And then a couple of months later shows up and say, oh, gosh, you know, I wanted this thing so bad, but unfortunately, I was not able to line up the necessary financing. So with deepest regrets, I'm going to have to step away from the Twitter Corporation. Like, is that not actually a much more plausible explanation than him waking up one day and deciding to spend $44 billion?

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it would be a plausible explanation, except for the fact that, like, we live in a nation of laws. Because I was skeptical too. When I first heard this, I thought, okay, here we go again. He's just gonna like toy around with this company and then back out at the last minute. But I've spent, you know, the past day like reading smart takes from lawyers, securities lawyers, people who have done large M and A deals before. And I've gotten much more skeptical of what you're saying, which is that this is just a ploy to sort of run out the clock, in part because like, I think Twitter is obviously going to do its best to try to make sure that he comes through, that he actually delivers this money. They're going to be watching him like a hawk. The judge in the Delaware Chancery Court, who is going to hear this trial, is going

• 13:05Speaker 02

  to be very upset if this is just another ploy to waste her time and Twitter's time and everyone's time. So I actually, I started where you are, and by the end of the day, I was basically convinced that this is going to happen. And I haven't yet come to the conclusion about why, which is the big question, why this sort of sudden change of mind, except to say that like, you know, this is not a guy who like does due diligence. He does like vibe checks, essentially. And I got, you know, I got the sense when he was trying to pull out of the deal, that it was just sort of because he was bored and because it seemed like more annoying to buy Twitter than not to buy it. And like, you know, he

• 13:50Speaker 02

  probably had a lot of other work going on at Tesla and SpaceX that he was like not that excited about distracting himself from. And now maybe it feels like, okay, well, everyone expects me not to buy this thing. So maybe I'm gonna buy it after all. Like, maybe the like, you know, the fun thing to do would be to actually acquire Twitter, try to, you know, turn it around, make it profitable, fix the things that are wrong with it. And by the way, like, you know, getting to run Twitter is like a, you know, a pretty big deal if you're Elon Musk. You know, you're not just one of the biggest users of the platform, like you also run the thing now. So I, you know, this is my sort of unsatisfying explanation for why is just like, you know, the vibes, basically.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  The vibes shifted. Yeah, that, you know, we do live in a world where I feel like vibes explains maybe 70% of all things.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  At least 70% of all things involving Elon Musk.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  I think, I think we're still missing a beat here. You know, it's like, you know what I think Elon Musk doesn't care about? Whether a judge is upset with him. I don't think he's losing a lot of sleep, wondering what Kathleen over at the Chancery Court has to say, right? So there's going to be another twist to this story. Like, I would be truly astonished if this were the final beat of the story and that within a few weeks Elon Musk were the owner of Twitter. But by the way, if he does become the owner of Twitter, it is going to be so much more annoying to run than he ever imagined. Okay? Everything that he thought was going to be annoying about running this company after he initially signed the deal this spring, like, will only be more so as we head into

• 15:27Speaker 01

  a midterm election, a presidential election, and who knows what other controversies will arise, you know? Not to even mention all the business issues that he has to solve. So if indeed he has bought the company, good luck Elon Musk, you're going to need it.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think he is going to buy the company. I think that in a couple of weeks, he will be the owner of Twitter, probably before the midterms. So I guess we'll see who's right on that.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  I'm glad we're recording this. I'm really looking forward to playing this back to you in like two weeks. I will say that.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's start our podcast with me just viciously owning myself, or you viciously owning yourself. Let's talk about, though, what happens next. So let's assume, let's enter my world where I'm pretty sure this deal, I would put my certainty at like 95% that this deal is going to close.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  My god.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  I know, I know. Fool me once, but I really think there's like no way out for him at this point.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  All right.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  So let's talk about what happens next if he does, in fact, become the new owner of Twitter. So I wrote a column this week, laying out sort of six things that I think will happen pretty much immediately if Elon Musk buys Twitter. I won't go through them all, but the first is, I think, obviously, he's going to fire Parag Agrawal, Twitter's CEO.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Oh, and Parag is excited about that. Like, because the moment he gets fired, Parag Agrawal gets $42 million. Like, that's going to be the best firing of Parag's life.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Right, like he's been the CEO for less than a year. He comes in, he immediately gets fired by Elon Musk and gets a $42 million payout. Like, not a bad year.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  That's the CEO gig I think we all want. You know, come in, do as little as possible, get fired for 42 million.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think that's an easy call to make. Elon Musk, you know, from his text messages that we saw last week, you know, they clearly don't see eye to eye. He, you know, they had this very snappy exchange where Parag was basically like, hey, could you stop like tweeting mean things about us? And Elon said sort of famously, what have you done this week? Just sort of like accusing him of like being, you know, lazy and overpaid and like not doing his job. So Parag's gone. I think a lot of Twitter executives will be gone. Elon has made no secret of the fact that he does not like a lot of the company's leadership. So that's prediction number one is just total clearing of the executive ranks. I think there's going to be a larger employee revolt too.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  I mean, I know we've both been talking to folks inside Twitter. The people I'm talking to are not happy and they don't want to work for Elon Musk. And if this deal closes, I think that some or maybe most of them will leave. I think obviously, you know, Donald Trump will be allowed back on the platform. That's something that Elon Musk has said he would do if he buys Twitter. And, you know, Elon has also, you know, said in these texts that he wants to reverse all permanent bans on Twitter except for, I think, spam accounts and direct incitements to violence. So, you know, it will be a field day for people who have been banned from Twitter in the past who will be allowed to come back on. And then, you know, I had a couple more sort of predictions about what's going to happen

• 18:39Speaker 02

  with Twitter's products, but just react to that so far. Like, am I off in any of these predictions? Do you think any of that is unlikely if this deal does go through?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think your predictions are accurate. I think like the one I'm most interested in is the one where he just like reverses all of these bans, you know, it's like, it's like the Joker takes over Arkham Asylum and then just releases all of the supervillains like back out into Gotham City is like the world that we're about to be living in. And will certainly make the timeline more interesting. But the employee attrition thing, I think, is worth taking a beat on because at the end of the day, it's not Elon Musk who is going to be writing the code, right? He has to rely on people who have built the system over the years. It's a famously complicated system, you know, there are people inside Twitter who say like, look, if these five engineers leave, like, we don't know how

• 19:31Speaker 01

  to restart the servers, like, if they shut down. So there's a really interesting issue there where they lost like 700 employees on net. By September, they're going to lose a lot more. So what does Twitter look like when people truly start heading for the exits? And, you know, would Elon Musk be able to replace those people, you know, with folks who could build his vision for it? These are all open questions.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I mean, to be fair, like, a lot of the people close to Elon would probably say, like, good, these employees should leave. They are, you know, clearly not on board with the idea of a social network that, you know, champions free speech. They're like censorious and woke and they're not gonna, you know, they're gonna try to sabotage this from within if they stay. So like, basically, good riddance. And Elon will need to cut some costs. Like, that's part of his plan for Twitter is to, you know, he said explicitly in the pitch deck that he submitted to investors, that they would, you know, they would shed employees in the first year. And so the more people quit on their own, the fewer he has

• 20:35Speaker 02

  to go through and fire or lay off. So I think in some ways, like, this is not an outcome that Elon Musk would be unhappy with if a bunch of politically, you know, sort of minded Twitter employees decide to get up and quit altogether.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  But can we talk about why he's going to get slapped upside the head by reality on that one?

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  So there is this idea that if for social networks to be truly great, we must stop moderating content. We must stop removing posts, right? We have to treat every post as equal, something like that. Keep in mind, the reason that all these rules arose was that users hated living in a world where they saw constant hate speech, harassment, abuse, and they literally did leave Twitter, right? Disney refused to buy the company at one point because there was so much harassment on it. And so the market responded by saying, we're going to introduce new rules to make people feel safer, happier, like they can have a good conversation. So if you think that Twitter is going to go supernova just by like getting rid of its

• 21:40Speaker 01

  community standards, go check on some of these Twitter clones that have been created by conservatives over the past couple of years, right? Look at Truth Social, Parler, Getter. These apps are not monoliths bestriding the earth. They're struggling to hang on. And I would argue a big reason for that is they don't take the well-being of their users as seriously as some of these other platforms.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Totally. And look at the success of TikTok, which is the fastest growing social network in the US and is also one of the most heavily moderated. So I think you're right, he's going to get slapped upside the face by reality. I was also talking to a former Twitter executive who was making the point that basically the biggest outcome of this acquisition, if it goes through, could be something that nobody expects, right? Like sort of to the point that you were making about how, you know, there's only five people who like understand how to fix this particular part of Twitter. Like it's not a huge company with like a very stable infrastructure.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  And this person was making the point that like, basically, you know, there are lots of things that could happen. There could be a huge data breach because the five security engineers who understand the inner workings of the company have all left because they don't want to work for Elon Musk. Like DMs on Twitter are not end-to-end encrypted. So, you know, those could come out and cause all kinds of havoc. So I think, you know, this person's point was like, basically, you know, there's kinds of chaos that we can foresee now, but there could also be something totally out of left field that no one, including Elon Musk, sees coming.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  And that's what this podcast is about, actually. The secret chaos you never saw coming. That has changed your life forever.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  So Casey, what do you think comes next in this deal? Like, we have this new deadline of October 28th. They have to close the deal or it's going to go to trial sometime in November. There are still some questions about whether Elon actually has the money in hand to write the check to Twitter for $44 billion. What do you think the next wave of news on this is going to be?

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Well, the next wave is going to be Elon Musk trying to find new excuses to get out of this deal. Like, this is what I believe in my heart. You can read it in the Twitter lawyer's response to him asking for a stay in the trial. They point out that in his communications, he clearly seems to be angling for potential new escape hatches. So I think, you know, I would again be surprised if we make it all the way to October 28th and what we find is that Elon Musk has closed that deal. I think he is still scrambling, trying to find a way out.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  I also think he's scrambling to find a way out. I just don't think he will. I think he has no way out and I think he's going to end up forking over $44 billion and becoming the owner of Twitter.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  So you think he's in the critical effing around stage and on October 28th, he's going to find out?

• 24:34Speaker 02

  I think so. And I guess we will know who is right and who is wrong, maybe even by Halloween.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Spooky season is upon us.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  All right. I think we're done talking about Elon Musk for now. Let's move on.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  But here we have an appointment in the metaverse.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  We do. It's coming up right after the break.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  All right. I got my VR headset on. I'm going to go into Horizon Worlds and I'm supposed to meet Cash at a very British pub.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Hello? Cash? Hello?

• 25:43Speaker 02

  I don't see Kashmir. Kashmir, Kashmir. Okay, I'm going into like a little bar. There's some tables, there's a fireplace. Yeah, fine. Looks cozy, and there's some beer. Grab a beer, okay, I'm drinking a beer. The metaverse, why they didn't even check my ID?

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Oh wait, is that Cash?

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's me. Sorry, I just started my recording. Hello, how's it going?

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Fancy seeing you here. Should we move somewhere a little more private?

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Yes, the problem in the metaverse is not being alone.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  Oh, what happened?

• 26:33Speaker 02

  No, wait, did I just get booted?

• 26:34Speaker 03

  I got booted.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  No!

• 26:38Speaker 02

  I got booted.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no, no, get me back, get me back. Alright, I'm going back. Let's get him. Let's get him. Beat him up. Wait, are you punching me? Am I getting? Yeah. Am I in a bar fight right now? Come here. Okay.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  Whoa, hello. Kevin, are you here? Kevin? Kevin?

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Wait, what happened?

• 27:04Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  You're here.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  But I'm here.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Spongey Beans is trying to fight me.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh, well, there's a pop.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  And I got kicked again.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  Now I'm by myself.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  I don't know what's going on.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Okay, well, we have a backup plan, Cash. Casey has actually set up a room for us in Horizon Workrooms, the other meta, metaverse app. So I think we should go there and meet him.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, sure.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Oh, there's Kevin. And he's wearing a cowboy hat. Incredible. You look like J.R. Ewing from Dallas or something.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Oh, hello. Hey, she's here. I'm here.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Um, so Cash, thank you for coming to this more private space. Uh, this feels way less chaotic than that British pub. So we are in a virtual Metaverse room. We're at the beach, it looks like.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  It's kind of like a Greek look. It's like a Grecian beach.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  The Greek beach?

• 28:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  There's like a sign that looks to be like in Greek.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  There's a blackboard if we needed to get up there.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Okay, so now that we're here and Casey's here and we're all together in this strange Metaverse conference room thing, I want to ask you about this story of yours that just came out in The Times about a truly incredible amount of time that you have spent inside Meta's Metaverse. You've been here for how long? When did you start this?

• 28:43Speaker 03

  I started it at the end of July. This has been a couple of months now.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  Dozens and dozens of hours.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  And why did you do this?

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Well, I'm a technology reporter and so I, like many people, have been hearing a lot about this so-called Metaverse and how it's going to change everything, change the way we live, change the way we do the internet, this immersive, uh, three-dimensional, co-present, spatial version of the internet. And as much as I heard people talking about it, I still didn't really understand what it was. Um, I've read a lot of science fiction. I'd read Snow Crash years ago, the, you know, sci-fi novel that the term Metaverse came from, but I just wanted to see what it was like to immerse myself in the immersive internet and see who's there, what they're doing, and whether this thing that Meta, the company

• 29:35Speaker 03

  formerly known as Facebook, has staked its future on, seems like it's worth it.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  So I've spent much less time in the metaverse than you. I spent some time using this like VR workout app a few years ago during COVID when I couldn't leave my house. And I played a little like poker and other games in like this metaverse casino. But what did you do in the metaverse? How did you start? Where did you go? What kind of things did you participate in?

• 30:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I decided that I was just gonna, I know there's a lot of apps. There's like gaming apps. I did get kind of obsessed with Beat Saber, which is like Guitar Hero and virtual reality. But for the immersion, I just wanted to focus on Meta's social network, which is called Horizon or Horizon Worlds or Horizon Workrooms or Horizon Venues, depending on which kind of version of it you're using. Because I figured, you know, Meta is a social networking company. So if there's any part of the metaverse that's furthest along at this point, it must be this social network. And so over the last couple of months, I have been going to Horizon every day. My goal was to do all 24 hours of the day,

• 30:47Speaker 03

  non-consecutively. And so I did that and more. I think it's it's over 40 hours at this point.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Wow, a full work week.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  A full work week. And I did have to space it out. Like, I would need breaks, though not everybody feels that way. There, I met people who go into virtual reality, into Horizon every single day.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Wow. So, Cass, you've seen a few generations of technology come and go. And I'm curious, having now had this experience, how much of this has felt like a fun novelty, something different to do? And how much of it has felt like, hmm, maybe this could be the next big thing?

• 31:21Speaker 03

  I mean, it really, it reminded me of a few different things, technologies I've experienced over the years. I mean, it felt like an AOL chatroom, for sure. Like, it was, it took me back to the 90s, dial-up internet, just going into a room and talking to strangers. And at the time, that was incredible. Like, wow, I'm talking to somebody who lives across the country or across the world. But This was different in that you are kind of in that space with them and you hear their voice. So that was interesting because, I don't know, when I went on the internet in the 90s, I always would lie about who I was. I was always, you know, 10 years older. Maybe I was a man, maybe I was a woman. Like, I really played around with identity when I got on the internet. But it is harder to do that in Horizon workrooms because you

• 32:06Speaker 03

  hear people's voices. So unless you're using some kind of, you know, modulating software to change your voice, there is some sense of who that person really is. And yeah, I don't, it's hard, it's so hard to predict if it is kind of a lark or fad. But I did have the sense that me writing about this social network on the metaverse as kind of the future of the metaverse would be like trying to write about the future of the internet from a chatroom on AOL in the 90s.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Hmm. And let's talk about some of the people that you met in the metaverse. Like, who were they? Why were they there? Like, because you were, you were interviewing people too, right? So what did you learn about the other people who were in the metaverse with you?

• 32:50Speaker 03

  As many journalists have written, there are a lot of kids in there. Meta finally has a product that the young people like. A lot of teenagers, there was a six-year-old. This morning, I was in there playing basketball with two seven-year-olds because they're off today. And then I kind of found my tribe of parents with young kids who can't go out anymore. And so especially when I did late night Metaverse, which was my favorite Metaverse, it would just be like, you know, a single mom from Southern California who was sending her daughter off to with her partner the next day. So she was up late, just like hanging out with adults. Yeah, a lot, a lot of parents who don't go out anymore, but who can go out in the metaverse. I met people who were, who were isolated and lonely during the pandemic,

• 33:31Speaker 03

  who kind of came to virtual reality in 2020 as a way of socializing and liked it so much that they keep doing it. I met entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out how to make money off of the metaverse, who are creating worlds, are trying to create assets to sell, very, very second life-y. And it was a diverse community. I mean, it's, it's hard to tell because you're looking at avatars and I don't know if people have chosen avatar that's really them. But I would say it was a very diverse group of people there.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  So Cash, I think the sort of general impression of the metaverse so far, at least if you talk to people who are skeptical of what Meta is doing here, is that it's just not super compelling yet, that there aren't a lot of things that would make you want to spend hours or days inside this metaverse, that maybe this is something cool that is going to arrive at some point in the future, but that today, there's really not that much there. But it sounds like your experience was actually pretty positive.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I too was skeptical of a technology I had never really tried. And I didn't think I would like it very much because putting this pound of plastic on my head, just there's something inside me that kind of revolts against that. So it surprised me when I actually enjoyed the time that I spent there. And I was surprised by the number of people I met who love being in the metaverse, who love socializing there, who are having so much fun that they're not willing to stop at two hours when their battery runs out on their headset, who are getting external batteries, who are plugging themselves into the wall,

• 35:17Speaker 03

  which people called plug and play. And every time I was like, oh, my battery's dying, I gotta go. People would just be like, well, why don't you plug and play? And I was just very disturbed that there's already an expression for that. Yeah, people like it in there.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  I like this idea that there are people who are already so devoted to the metaverse that they're strapping extra batteries to their persons at all times. And I think this has actually been one of the big questions about VR, is are people going to want to do this for extended periods of time? I think there's a lot of skepticism about that point. People don't want to remove themselves from the so-called real world. But I've always thought that VR was absolutely going to take off because when I walk around outside, all I see are people staring down at their phones. Go to any restaurant and a couple will be having dinner and both of them are staring at their phones. So to me, it stands to reason that if you could just sort of staple that phone to your face forever, you would do it.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  And I feel like the experience that you had suggests that we are on our way to that reality.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was talking to this one world creator who designed a very British pub where Kevin and I tried to meet up earlier. And he just got his headset a couple of months ago, like in June, and he told me he's already spending up to 40 hours a week wearing his headset on top of his full-time job, just basically to run his pub and deal with troubleshooting and fix design issues. And he said, oh, you know, I just use the, you know, the long Apple charging cord, the USB cord, so I can basically be further away from the wall while I'm in the headset. But this is very common. Like, yeah, people like this thing that's not stapled to their head, but encircling it very, very snugly.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  So, you know, it's been estimated that Meta has sold something like 15 million of its latest VR headset, which is like a decent number. And yet, like, my impression from my own usage of this stuff and from people that I know is that a lot of people, you know, they take this out of the box, maybe they got it for Christmas, they, you know, use it for a couple of weeks pretty intensely, they find some fun stuff to do, and then they kind of forget about it. They put it in a box, they put it in their closet. It's not a regular part of their lives. And to Casey's point about the smartphone comparison, like, no one did that with smartphones. No one got an iPhone and used it for a couple of weeks and then was like, you know, I kind of prefer using my old phone and like put

• 37:47Speaker 02

  the iPhone in a closet and never picked it up again. So what is it about this metaverse experience that is not turning people into habitual repeat users for the most part? Although you certainly did meet some of those people.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  You know, I mean, it's a real barrier to entry to pull this headset onto your head. Like, I did not want to do it. It just doesn't, it's not natural. It's not like that beautiful iPhone that's in your hand, it just feels good. You just want to keep like touching it and rubbing it and putting it in your pocket and then taking it out again. It is not as aesthetically pleasing. And so I think that's a big, big hump to get over.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  I'm thinking about, you know, like Kevin, I am the person that you described who got this thing. I used it for about a month. Like, I did Supernatural, the sort of fitness app that Facebook tried to buy but got shut down by the FTC. I used that for like a month, and then I felt like, okay, like, but it sort of felt...

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Like to use an analogy, when the first Apple Watch came out, like it didn't, the screen didn't show the time unless you tapped it. And I thought it's worse at being a watch than a watch is. So I don't want this watch, you know, I'm just gonna wait. But then eventually they came out with an Apple Watch that just had an always on display. And I said, great. And I bought one. And I think it's like, pretty good. With the Meta Quest 2, I sort of feel like that. Like, I can use it for a month, and I can play some games, and I can talk to friends, and I can engage with what's there. But like, none of it is as good at like, being a game as like, the games on my PlayStation 5. None of it is as good as talking to my friends as like, Zoom. So I wonder if we are just kind of in that intermediate zone between, um, you know,

• 39:27Speaker 01

  it's better than basic, right? It's they've figured out a lot of stuff. There's a lot of like, technological achievement there. But I do think for most people right now, it still feels like more of a novelty than a permanent home base.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I definitely noticed, like, it tells you, right, who of your friends is on Meta or has the Quest 2. And so I just assumed I'd eventually hang out with one of those people. And none of those people ever came online. So it was definitely including, well, I think I tried to friend you, Kevin, you didn't even ever respond because you probably never put on your headset.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Classic Kevin. I did accept your friend request. This is inexcusable.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  Like this morning. You accepted it this morning.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  You know, I'm very

• 40:09Speaker 03

  I put it in months ago. But yeah, the people that are kind of in my circles are not naturally gravitating towards using their Quest 2 right now. And so I was just interacting with strangers, which is why it reminded me so much of the early internet and getting on chat rooms and talking to people.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  But if you were Mark Zuckerberg, you would invest $10 billion in this this year?

• 40:33Speaker 03

  Oh, man, that's a lot of money. That's a lot of money.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  But here's the good news, you have it.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  Well, so, speaking of money, I mean, one of the big reasons that Meta is spending all this money developing the Metaverse is because they believe it will eventually make money. Like, this is not a charitable project for them. They think that they will be paid back in not just headset sales, but also, you know, maybe showing you targeted ads inside the Metaverse. Maybe people will pay for, you know, content, for experiences, for concerts in the Metaverse. Did you buy anything in your time in the Metaverse? Or were you tempted to buy anything?

• 41:14Speaker 03

  So I didn't. I actually did see some, like, real, basic ads in the Metaverse. There's this one world called The Party House, which has one of the bigger limits for how many people can be there. So it gets pretty, like, wild in there.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Crazy party.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And so they had some, like, crude, kind of, like, home-designed ads for dating apps, I saw, which I thought was funny. A lot of the world, you could become a supporter. And so, I actually was gonna do that for one of the comedy clubs I went to. And you can, you can just basically donate some money, and Meta gets a cut of it. And it gets you in the Soapstone Comedy Club world, which, which Mark Zuckerberg shouted out when he was on Joe Rogan's podcast. If you donate, if you become a supporter, there's like, a special part of the world. You can go to, like, a supporters lounge. You can get, like, a button and put it on. But, other than that, yeah, there wasn't a lot for me

• 42:08Speaker 03

  to buy yet. I mean, there's lots of apps to buy on the headset. I bought, super hot, this, like, kind of cool VR game where when you move, the world moves, which is kind of playing with what VR is, which was cool. But yeah, lots of apps to buy in the headset. Horizon yet is not super monetized.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  And you talked about reading science fiction a lot as part of the inspiration for why you wanted to do this project. And in science fiction, you know, when something like the Metaverse is portrayed, especially in Snow Crash, the book that sort of coined the term "Metaverse," it was a place where people sort of went to escape the real world because the real world was, you know, on fire. It was, you know, things were sort of apocalyptically bad. And so the Metaverse was this kind of, like, place where they could hang out that wasn't falling apart. Did you get a sense from talking to people in the Metaverse that any of them were using the Metaverse this way as sort of an escape from parts of their life that weren't all that great?

• 43:08Speaker 03

  I had this one encounter that reminded me so much of kind of the original coining of the metaverse in books like Ready Player One. I met this woman who is an illustrator. She's 25 and we are talking in the plaza and she was just saying she hates that the metaverse gets portrayed as like a nerdy place for people who don't have a life. And she said, you know, I don't want to be dramatic, but if I hadn't got my VR headset when I did, I might be dead right now.

• 43:39Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  And she said, you know, she's had mental health issues, that she's dealing with depression, that she was super isolated at the beginning of the pandemic. She had moved across the country to get away from an abusive relationship and she was, she had no friends and there was a pandemic going on. And she walked into an Amazon four-star store one day, saw the headset and bought it. And she's been going into VR every night since then. And that she's formed like these really deep connections in Horizon. She loves her friends there. She says she loves that there's no small talk really in VR. You kind of go straight to the deep stuff. She doesn't get judged on how she looks. Yeah, she, she really, really

• 44:21Speaker 03

  loves VR. And she said she still goes out, she still hangs out with real world friends, but she just, she loves getting on her headset from like 1 to 3 a.m. in her bed with like some snacks and a drink next to her and a weighted blanket over her body and just chatting for hours.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  You know, and I think it's worth saying that this is something that the internet is good at and has always been good at, is helping people feel a little bit less alone, meeting new people, meeting new people who are like you. And that story, I think, is powerful and speaks to the fact that a lot of people probably are going to find cool new connections in here. In a way that, for some of the reasons you just mentioned, maybe they would not have in a previous generation technology.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  At the same time, though, I do want to just like sound a note of skepticism here because I think that

• 45:08Speaker 03

  There's a good cop, bad cop in here.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  I just like, I understand and appreciate everything you're saying, but it does strike me as like, kind of dystopian that you have people who, you know, we have, we have an internet that connects people, you know, anyone can talk to anyone. We have all these technologies that have enabled us to communicate at scale. And yet, like, the way that some people are finding connection is to go into this like walled garden metaverse experience where everything they do, everything they say, every movement they make is being tracked and logged somewhere for, you know, Meta to see where the whole point of the thing commercially is to sell them stuff. It just feels like a really poor substitute

• 45:57Speaker 02

  for the real world. I mean, does that, am I being too cynical here?

• 46:03Speaker 01

  I mean, the smartphone was a poor substitute for the real world, but we moved to there.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  I mean, everything, it's all, Mark Zuckerberg, I listened to the three hour podcast he did with Joe Rogan. And, you know, he basically said, technology is getting in the way of our interactions. Like, everyone's looking away, they're looking at their phone, they're looking at screens, they're not with the people around them. So I decided to make the metaverse because then it'll get technology out of the way and you'll just be immersed inside it. You know, I think all technology is kind of interrupting our ability to be with each other. And it enables good things, it enables bad things. But yeah, for me personally, I don't know, I didn't necessarily want to leave my family or, or go indoors instead

• 46:48Speaker 03

  of hang out outside playing with my kids, go indoors and put on this headset. It does take you away from the people you're with. But if you're in a situation where you're lonely and you don't have people around you, you don't have like a support system or something to do, I guess I can see the appeal.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  So Meta has an event scheduled for next week called Connect. It's basically, it's VR developer conference and it's supposed to release some new tools. It's rumored to be coming out with a new headset. It's just going to sort of update people on the progress that they're making toward building the metaverse. What do you expect to hear during that event?

• 47:25Speaker 03

  So it does sound like they're coming out with a more expensive headset that will have more sensors on it, maybe is lighter than the one that's currently available to people. You know, Mark Zuckerberg did have this Instagram photo he did of himself in this kind of sleek new headset on Joe Rogan's podcast. Apparently, Joe Rogan has gotten to try out the new headset already because he was talking about wearing it and looking at it kind of an alien avatar version of himself. And when he moved his face, the avatar also moved its face in the same way, which the current headset does not do.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  I mean, I think we should say this is a huge moment for them. They've had a terrible year. Their stock has lost over half of its value. They're trying to figure out how to compete against TikTok and struggling. And the whole reason they're going through all of that is to fund this project, right? This sort of next generation set of things. And once a year, they bring everyone together to let us know how it's going. And so they're going to have that moment next week.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I imagine I imagine it'll probably have some new numbers about how many people have joined. And, you know, they're kind of treating the Horizon, the social network I was focusing on, like they did the original Facebook, like it rolled out in the US and Canada first, kind of like Facebook rolled out to Harvard first. And they're spreading it to new countries, kind of like Facebook went to new colleges. And so that alone, I think, is going to help their numbers because they've made it available in the UK. They've made it available in Spain. And so I'm sure they'll have some new number for Horizon about how many people are in there now. And it will be bigger than 300,000.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  I hope they announce how many people are asleep in Oculus right now.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  So I talked to the person who ran the Very British Pub. He's like, yeah, sometimes I come in here and there's people that are just sleeping on their headset downstairs because they want to be at the top of the leaderboard for people who have spent the most time here. I'm just like, oh, my gosh, people are so wild.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Cash, thank you so much for joining us. Really, really fun to talk to you.

• 49:41Speaker 03

  Well, I'm honored to be on the first episode.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Thank you, Cash. This is great.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  All right.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, some transparency.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Casey, one of the things that I've always admired about you is just how transparent you are with your audience. I remember when you started your newsletter, you wrote this like big sort of disclosure page, almost like a transparency report where it's like you're talking about how you get information and how you report and how people can contact you. But also, like, you just write some sort of bullet points about things that you believe about the topics that you cover. And I think that's extremely helpful for readers of your newsletter to understand where you're coming from. It's sort of like an FAQ page for like you.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really great exercise for any journalist to go through. Honestly, sometimes writing down what you think is the only way to know it. And this is an idea I took from Jay Rosen, who's a great press critic and thinker at NYU. And he's been sort of advocating for many years that more people would trust journalists if people knew where we come from. And so I tried to write a page that says, hey, here's where I'm coming from.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I thought that we could maybe just like borrow from your document and just kind of for this podcast, as we set out to like, start a new show that's going to look at technology, just by like, giving people a little sense of who we are and some things that we believe that might help interpret what we're saying.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  I love this idea.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Well, obviously, you love this idea. It's your idea.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  So I got inspired and I wrote down just three sort of I statements about myself and my outlook and my beliefs about tech and the stuff we'll be covering on the show. You agreed to also come up with three I statements. We have not heard each other's. So let's run through them and just give people the inaugural Hard Fork Transparency Report.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  All right, here we go.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  So I'll go first. My first I statement is that I am a recovering tech cynic. And what I mean by that is like, you know, I grew up as a total nerd. I was deeply in love with the internet and computers. My first job was like building websites in, you know, Macromedia, Dreamweaver with my brother. Like, all my free time was spent in chat rooms and message boards, just like a total internet kid.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  And then I became a journalist and for a while, like, all I was reporting on was like how this thing I love, the internet, was getting screwed up. So I spent, you know, most of the past five years just reporting on things that were bad, like QAnon and neo-Nazis organizing in chat rooms and like YouTube turning, you know, young men into racists. And like, I just spent every day dunking my head into like the toilet of the internet. And it kind of gave me this like cynical reflex.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Where like every time I would see something new in tech, I would, I would think like, okay, well, this is obviously going to be used to kill someone. Like, that was just, that was like how I thought. And I think that's changing for me. Why I say I'm a recovering tech cynic is because I became a dad this year. I had a kid. And I think that having a kid has forced me to kind of like reexamine my attitudes about technology, not because like, you know, he's still like too young to use anything, but because like he will use technology and I don't want him to be scared of it. And I don't want to teach my son that like only horrible things happen on the internet. So like, you know, I obviously, there's a lot in tech that I'm skeptical of.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  It doesn't mean that we can't be skeptical or critical on this show. But I am starting to try to find things that I like about tech again, after many years of just being depressed and angry about it. And I think that's why I was drawn to this metaverse story of Cashmere's, which is this thing that I still have a lot of questions and frankly, am kind of skeptical of, but that she approached with an open mind and curiosity and ended up kind of liking it.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think that ties it well to mine. Mine is, I want the internet to be as good for everyone else as it has been for me. I'm somebody who grew up on the internet. I learned a ton on the internet. I met so many creative people on the internet. I saw how much fun it could be when people were suddenly granted access to a big audience of like-minded people who wanted to make stuff together. And if you fast forward all the way from like, high school to now, I now make my living on the internet. I write a newsletter that I sell to thousands of subscribers who've given me a job that really can't be taken away from me unless they all independently decide they don't want to hire me anymore, right? And so when I think about what kind of products I want to see, what kind of policies I want

• 55:15Speaker 01

  to see, what kinds of regulations I want to see, I'm just asking myself, does this make the sort of internet that makes people feel more creative, that gives them economic opportunity, or is this going to take us in the other direction? So that's my first one.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  All right, number two, here's mine. I don't believe that technology can be neutral. So there's this thing that you hear all the time when talking to people in tech, that's like, basically that technology is just a tool. And it's one of my biggest pet peeves. And I especially hate it when they use this stupid hammer analogy. I know you know what I'm talking about, where they say like, well, hammer's just a tool, like you can use it to build a house, or you can use it to kill someone. And then they'll use that logic to like, say that Bitcoin is neutral, or like, AI is neutral, or social media is neutral, that it all depends on how you use it. And that we should basically stop trying to like, control how these things are built

• 56:13Speaker 02

  and designed, because people are inevitably going to use them for like, good purposes and bad purposes. And to me, like- Every time I hear the hammer analogy or this broader point about tech being neutral, like it's always a mark of someone who just like hasn't thought deeply about what they're doing. Like, obviously, a hammer and how we use hammers has a lot to do with how they're designed. It's a pretty bad tool for killing someone, like a hammer. It's not designed for that. It's like, heavy, it's slow. But if you made it very good for killing people, if you like, put an exploding, you know, tip on it, if you like, you know, attached it to like hammer swinging robots and like sent them loose through the streets, like, obviously, hammers would be very threatening and we'd probably want to like pass a bunch

• 56:57Speaker 02

  of new laws to regulate hammers. So like, I think we should have like a soundboard that like anytime we're talking to someone in tech and they start explaining how their tool is neutral, we just like hit the whammy button and it like ejects them forcefully out of the Zoom. Because that is just my pet peeve and I don't know if that's something that bothers you too.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. You know, I think sometimes it definitely is a case of people not thinking through the potential consequences of their actions, but it can also just be choosing not to think about the consequences of your actions, right? Or maybe there's going to be so much financial upside in this thing that like, it's just sort of more profitable not to think about it. So yeah, I'm in the same camp as you. I don't think tech is neutral. And I think a role of journalism is to explain the non neutrality of the things that we're talking about, right? That is, that is a big part of what we're doing.

• 57:42Speaker 02

  Awesome. Let's hear your second one.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think the world is moving too fast for average people to understand. And I don't think it's just that we have access to social networks that give us a sort of, you know, pulse by pulse sense of every catastrophe happening in the world. I think that the technology industry is moving quickly enough that, you know, if you went and lived on an island for a year and came back in at this time in 2023, I think you would be shocked by some of the changes around you. And one of the reasons I've wanted to do the show with you is to kind of capture that feeling week to week and say, oh, man, there's that feeling again, that sense of, of being overwhelmed and a little bit uncertain. But let's talk to the smartest person we can find and learn a little bit more about that.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is an interesting one, and I actually kind of wonder if this is a new feeling or if people just always feel like this. I mean, there was that famous book from the 70s called Future Shock that sold like millions of copies and popularized the phrase information overload because it was like, all of these people sending faxes, like, I'm really stressed out and I don't understand. Like, and the technology that they're talking about really stressing them out is like a microwave.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  And so I just wonder if this is kind of just like the universal condition that we always kind of feel like we're behind and catching up. But I agree, I do want to bring that sense of like getting our arms around what is changing and like what people need to be thinking about and like what we need to be thinking about, frankly.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  All right, give me your number three.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  All right. My number three, I think it's trade offs all the way down. So this is a thing that I've actually sort of like changed my mind on in the last few years. I used to like get asked a lot, like, okay, how would, how would you fix, you know, Facebook? How would you fix Twitter? How would you, you know, fix YouTube, whatever? These are the kinds of things that people ask tech columnists. And I used to like have a set of pretty simple answers, like, oh, I would just like, you know, disable the news feed or like ban all political advertising or like, you know, let users own their own data. And you still like hear these things sort of floating around in like Washington and, you know, big tech conferences and stuff.

• 59:58Speaker 02

  But I think in the last few years, I've looked at these platforms closely enough and some of the proposals to fix them closely enough that I've seen that basically every time you could try to like fix something with a platform, you, you'll open up like seven or eight other disasters that might actually be worse than the problem that you're trying to solve. You know, something we have talked about a lot is like TikTok and this movement to ban TikTok because it's like a Chinese owned company and who knows what they're doing with the data and maybe the CCP is like covertly manipulating American public opinion through this like video app. And like, you could ban TikTok, that's like a thing you could do. And it would seem like a simple fix, but like. Other things would come up to replace it that have some of the same issues.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  And you would be like, basically giving like, the biggest gift imaginable to Facebook, to Meta, which would love for TikTok to be banned in the US. So you'd be entrenching Meta by banning TikTok. So I hope that we can get serious about talking about some of the risks and trade offs of all these proposed solutions and really have like, a pretty realistic and nuanced conversation about it.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love the idea, as we're talking about these issues, asking ourselves, like, what are the next two things that might happen after that, right? And using that to try to ground the discussion. Because you're absolutely right. Anytime you make a change, like, like some of the ones that you described, it really is like, the butterfly like, flapping its wings in Australia and, you know, causing a tropical storm somewhere else. So I think like, all tech regulation is kind of chaos theory. And so you, you know, you want to approach it with some caution.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  Totally. All right, hit me with your number three.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. So, number three, I think something is going to come out of crypto.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  Hot take.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. So crypto has had an absolutely terrible year. It has mostly been catastrophes. It has lost trillions of dollars. It is becoming ever less mainstream. And basically, almost everything that critics said about it, like, last year and before, has come true this year. And yet, I still know so many talented people who are working on this, who are pouring money into it, and who have infinite ideas for where it can go next. And I want to ground our podcast just in the, the knowledge that I personally think that all of those efforts will not amount to nothing. I think something is going to come out of it.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  And the reason I think that's important to say, by the way, is that sometimes when journalists talk about crypto in a way that acknowledges that something might succeed, it will come back on them as, oh, well, you're shilling this, you know, you're pumping this, you're ignoring all of the criticism. And so some people really don't want journalists to talk about crypto at all, right? Or at least not without sort of adding 50 caveats.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  Right. And I've experienced this too. You know, I'll write something about crypto that is, you know, just explanatory and what I think is pretty even handed, but that doesn't like, explicitly say like, and this is all bad and a scam and everyone's going to lose all their money. And people will get just very mad and accuse me of shilling for the industry.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  And I think I, you know, I share this sense too, that like something will probably come of crypto. I don't think it's going to be like the, you know, the, the replacement for the entire internet that like a lot of, you know, sort of web three boosters do. It may be that this fear of like DeFi or, you know, finance adjacent stuff takes off and the rest of it just flops or that like, you know, three bored apes like retain their value and everything else goes to zero. But like, I, I do think that there's sort of enough there that I wanted to like, you know, explain it seriously to people and there were, people got very mad.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, people get very mad and I imagine they will get mad sometimes if they listen to this show and we're talking about something in the crypto world where we're not just sort of observing a catastrophe, right? Maybe we do see something come along and we think, huh, that seems sort of interesting. So the thing that I want to say upfront to those people is the reason that we're talking about, the reason we're trying to learn more is because we want to keep an eye on this. We do not want to be surprised by it. If it winds up having big effects on the world, I'd rather be learning about it now. And so that's kind of the thing that I wanted to say to listeners, like right up front is like, we will be talking about this and we're going to try to bring skepticism to everything that we talk about, but we are going to make room for some optimism too, because I think it's intellectually dishonest not to.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  A hundred percent agree.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And just to say one more thing that some of those people ask about, like, we don't own crypto, we have no financial interest in the outcome of any crypto thing. Like, we truly are just curious people wondering what's going to happen next in the tech industry.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Totally. All right, Casey, thank you for helping me with this, what are we calling this? The Hard Fork Transparency Report?

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  That's right. And by the way, we really want to hear from you, the listeners. What feedback do you have about this episode? Who do you think we should bring on for future episodes? What should we be looking into? Let us know. Our email is [email protected].

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  Hard Fork is produced by Davis Land or edited by Paula Schuman and Hannah Ingber. This episode was fact-checked by Caitlin Love, original music by Dan Powell, Alicia Baetoupe and Marion Lozano. Our show was engineered by Corey Shreppel. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Shannon Busta, Julia Simon, Larissa Anderson, Quewing Tam, Kate LoPresti, Nell Gallogly, Mahima Chablani and Jeffrey Miranda. That's it for this week. See you next time.