BuzzFeed News executive editor Mat Honan on the "Zoom Class," NFTs, and San Francisco

BuzzFeed News executive editor Mat Honan has long covered the way society interacts with technology. He joins Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss the “Zoom Class,” the rise of NFTs, and how San Francisco may change after the pandemic. 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?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay?

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hey, Matt. Hello, Alex. How are you? I'm doing well. Good to see you again. I will read this ad and then we can just jump right into it. "Media Ocean is for people who like to be efficient, like listening to this podcast at 2X speed." So I'm talking super slow to make sure this ad is super clear. If you work in advertising, go to mediaocean.com/bigtech to watch highlights from the omnichannel imperative. That's mediaocean.com/bigtech.

• 1:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversations of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is one of the keenest observers of the tech world, full stop, and someone who helped turn me into a journalist during the five years I worked for him. Matt Honan is the executive editor at BuzzFeed News, the person who built the publication's award-winning Silicon Valley bureau, and overall, someone who I quite enjoy shooting the breeze with about tech's role in society. Matt, welcome to the show. Alex, I really appreciate you having me. It's been a long time coming, and I think we're slowly making our way through the whole BuzzFeed Bureau. So I'm really glad to have you here today.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Uh, thanks so much for asking me. Uh, I, I, I'm just very happy that I got to come on before John Pachkowski.

• 2:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, that's right. That's right. Um, and I do apologize having Mac on before you. We had to spend the first five minutes of our conversation talking about whether it's okay to microwave salmon. Now that he's not here, we can both agree the answer is definitely not. So.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's, it's, it's just, it's a total way to alienate people.

• 2:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  It's not good.

• 2:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Seems to be Ryan's specialty.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Great.

• 3:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so let's start with what this year of pandemic has done to accentuate divides in society. And specifically what the role of technology has been. So there's this part of the population that's been able to weather this thing from home and say in their jobs entirely from their kitchens. Uh, at full disclosure, I'm definitely one of them. Uh, people will call them the Zoom class. Some of these folks have even moved en masse to smaller towns outside of cities. Now people are calling these Zoom towns, but others haven't had the luxury. And, you know, they've either lost their jobs or they've had to go out into the real world to perform them. So what do you think the implications are here, Matt? You know, does our society become more divided because of this? What happens?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  I mean, I feel like I should start by disclosing that I'm in trucking right now.

• 3:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  There we go. But we're not on Zoom, so.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Or at least, or at least on the outskirts of it. Yeah.

• 3:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  So, uh,

• 3:55Speaker 01

  yeah, I mean, like, like you also hear this called the work from home class. I mean, there's like a couple of like really interesting things there, right? I mean, so first of all, like,

• 4:05Speaker 01

  I think it's true that, that if you think about what this pandemic would have looked like 20 years ago, when it would not have been possible to have a Zoom class or a work from home class or Zoom school and all that kind of stuff. Like, like technology really in a lot of ways helped this from becoming a lot worse than it could have been. You know, it helped, it, it, it clearly helped reduce community spread.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  But it's deeply unfair, certainly, that, that, that like some people were basically able to ride it out at home. You know, often all being paid very well to do that. And.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  You know, the, the, it really just, you know, there's that, I, I think it's almost a cliche at this point about it. Like, I can, I wish I could, I wish I could remember who said it first, because it's a brilliant truth that, that about the pandemic being the black light that exposed like all those, you know, all the problems in society.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  But I'm just, I feel like I've wandered away from your question now, but I, I'm, I, you know, I'm, I'm like, I'm like, you know, largely feel like this show that the technology can be a very positive, you know, can play a very positive role in society. The internet can play a very positive role in society. Uh, you know, I, I personally like have not been vaccinated yet and am not in a huge hurry to run out and get a vaccine because I feel like I've, well, look, man, I, I can work at home. I've been, you know, I've been fortunate enough that I can, uh, you know, that I can connect on Zoom or Google Meet or, or, you know, or whatever. And I can, you know, do all my work through this little box.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Which is like boring and, and, and, you know, life is, and life is monotonous and it's been March for a year and all that kind of stuff. But you know what? Like, I, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty incredible that, um,

• 5:54Speaker 01

  that that actually worked, um, that, that, that, you know, helped. And like in some ways, like it, it, you know, it, it was, you know, it was probably, um,

• 6:05Speaker 01

  I think, I think in some ways it was, it was, it was, it was just like a lot of like right stuff, right time in terms of the fact that it did work, you know? Like you worked on a story, uh, when this was all starting about video capabilities at, uh, you know, at, when, when, when the pandemic was, was getting going. And like so many people had gone to Amazon Web Services, there was so much bandwidth, you know, people had fiber to the house, there's all this stuff. But it, you know, it, it, it was really just, it's just deeply unfair that.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I mean, it's deeply unfair that so many people got to ride it out of home, you know?

• 6:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  And like, it's deeply unfair that like, so many, you know, the kids who had the, whose families had the, the money to have a better computer and better internet connection got, you know, got a better education or got an education. With some families, their kids just sat alone at home all day while both their parents are essential workers. You know, it's been, it's, it's been, it's really exposed the divides in society and how, you know, just, what kind of inequalities we have to work on as a society. I think that's more than anything else. Zoom towns is just like the most obnoxious, like, phrase I've heard in a long time. But it's, it's gonna have a, I just think it's gonna have a long-term transformative effect on society that I hope we can, we can make a positive one.

• 7:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So let's talk about that effect. I mean, what do you think happens? I mean, there's gotta be some, some, you know, we talk about the effect, but why don't we try to flush it out a little bit and talk about what that means?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I don't want to predict the future. I mean, frankly, I just don't want to predict the future. Like, I don't know. I don't know what it looks like, but I think that, um,

• 7:45Speaker 01

  I certainly hope that.

• 7:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, we could talk about where it might go.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe you should stay away from that.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  I mean, I certainly hope that like, um, all these conversations that we've had about race and class in the past year aren't, uh, you know, aren't, aren't for naught. And that all the things that we've learned about, about, um,

• 8:06Speaker 01

  you know, that who, who has the privilege to do these things, that we don't unlearn those. And that I hope that we can, I hope that we can, you know, make changes in society to make sure that the people who are least protected have better protections. I just, I firmly feel like if we don't learn lessons from this, that we really failed as a society. And we already failed in our response to the end of the condition of, the government response. And, and I feel like we're gonna really fail if we don't take lessons from this and try and make it a more equitable society.

• 8:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. My real concern is we already seem to have a country where people can't put themselves in their neighbor's shoes. Uh, and oftentimes it's not their neighbor, but the person that lives a zip code away. Uh, we have Democrats unable to understand Republicans, Republicans unable to understand Democrats. And I worry that this will just add another layer of division inside an already really divided country.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  You know, I I do too. I uh I do hope that there is some good to come out of it and we can have some sort of realignment. I I saw uh that there are, I saw something recently about the the massive number of of people who are registered as independents now, you know, versus uh four years ago, eight years ago, twelve years ago. And

• 9:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's been an increase?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, in a large change. And um, you know, I I think that, I I think that's like a kind of a positive thing. One of the worst things that we've done as a society, I think, is is in American society, is to divide everybody up into teams, you know, like, like, you know, you're you're on you're on one side and and, you know, my party, right or wrong, kind of shit. Uh, just it's it's been incredibly harmful. Um, you know, and I I think there's a, I I hope there's a chance that that we can, I just hope we can learn from it and and, you know, people become more civic minded and people can can, you know, get more involved. I I think that, you know, I mean, personally, like I like,

• 10:07Speaker 01

  like, all of a sudden, I care a lot more about uh about about schools, you know, and not just my kids' schools, but other kids' schools, you know, it's it's uh, the the Molly Hensley Clancy wrote a story on schools in the spring and about all these kids who've just been completely, you know, wrecked by by the pandemic and left behind. And and, you know, I'm certainly not the only person talking about, thinking about this, but it's it's it's, I I think people are really thinking about that now. And I hope that we continue to think about that. I hope that we can, you know, do things like, uh, you know, I don't know.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Like, um, I I mean, I I hope that we can do things like make sure that that that that all families can have, you know, can have fast internet at home. Like, why why why why is that something that um, why is that something that only only wealthy families can pay for? Why can't you have more equitable distribution of broadband? Why can't there be broadband in rural areas? Why can't there be more, you know, why can't we do more to have the government do a lot of infrastructure where places like, you know, I don't know, uh, you know, it it where where there's not affordable internet that people can get it?

• 11:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and there's also this other aspect of so when I came moved to San Francisco in 2015 to join your team. One of the things I told myself was I want to be in the bubble. You know, I was in New York and I was like, well, I'm not going to understand the tech industry until I'm in the bubble, until I'm going out to dinner and the people that I'm at, you know, having dinner with my friends are working at Facebook are working at Google, you know, where I'm online and I hear chit chat about, you know, how people are trying to build things. And then you start to understand the industry. And largely, it's been a good bet. And, and I do wonder, like, you know, we talk about, there's a great, you know, podcast about coronavirus called in the bubble, you know, and it seems like coronavirus

• 12:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  has put more people, some people in bubbles and other people haven't had the luxury. And I'm curious what you think that means for tech in particular, because tech already seemed the tech development already seemed like it was happening in a bubble. Now it seems to be further ensconced in a bubble. So, you know, I'm curious what you think that means in terms of people being able to build for everyone and not just, you know, the people who are, you know, zooming nine to five.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  I don't know, Alex. It's a great question, right? I mean, I think that some things maybe became like less bubbled, like for example, grocery delivery. You know, my, my, my, my mother who's in her 70s and lives in, you know, a rural area and has never and is on a fixed income and doesn't, you know, have a whole lot of resources, you know, had never been able to grocery deliver. Now she can do grocery delivery in curbside or order online, get a pickup and that kind of stuff. And she's been doing it for a year. It just wasn't like available in her area and the grocery stores that were there then kind of scrambled to implement it. And you're seeing, you know, kind of the

• 13:16Speaker 01

  I think an opium season, things like that, right? Where like places that weren't traditionally tech, like you're like you're like a rural grocery store, um, become, you know, have these infusions of technology that that that make them more more useful to to people's lives. That may be a dumb example, but.

• 13:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm thinking about the builders of technology. Like, are they gonna, you know, because they've been less, we have them listening to the show. So I'm curious, like, what you think, you know, if they, you know, they're less exposed to, um, you know, folks who don't work in the tech industry. And of course, I guess we'll go back to normal, potentially in a couple of months, but I'm curious what you think that means.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think what you're saying is like,

• 14:01Speaker 01

  because of the because of of people's ability to write it out at Zoom, does that mean that they're going to now have even less empathy than they already did have for people who they're not have been having contact with? Is that basically it?

• 14:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, that's a more blunt, uh, way of putting it than I did. But why didn't you answer that question? I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  I mean, it's concerning. It's definitely concerning, you know? Um, I mean, there was there was a story, story about giraffe. Did you see the giraffe money story?

• 14:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, I I saw it. I I forgot what the reference was, but uh, you could buy a gir- you have enough money, you could buy a giraffe. Is that what it was?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Right, right. Like even thinking in your like when you when you when your company goes public. Yeah.

• 14:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Are you are you gonna get giraffe money from from this IPO or just, uh, you know, you know, or just fancy dog money? I don't know. Um, and you want to have giraffe money, right? I mean, just like even that those discussions are taking place, we uh, is, you know, is,

• 14:59Speaker 01

  it's messed up. I mean, I mean, America, the US is pretty messed up. Um, I think a lot of that, though, is is due to like long-term tax policy, long-term policies around race, long-term policies around who got to get a loan to buy a home, that type of thing. Uh, but it's not, it's like, I would hope that the people who are listening to this this podcast, who are the builders, are thinking about the, you know, kind of unglamorous middle class and and and and working class and working poor who, you know, are not living in those bubbles and are not, uh, you know, are not.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Are not able to to be on Zoom all day. There's this new ad from a gig economy company basically saying I'm my own CEO. Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 15:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  In spirit, but not in this specific example.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  It's a, I'm not going to say the company's name, but there's a company, there's a company that maybe they'll sponsor your show at some point. So there's, there's, there's a, there's, there's a company that, that has a new ad about a, you know, where a, one of their drivers is, you know, sort of like, I'm my own CEO. You know, and it just, it struck me as tone deaf. I think it struck a lot of people as tone deaf because yeah, you're your own CEO. You don't have health benefits. You don't have, you don't have unemployment benefits. You don't have, um, you know, you don't have any of the kind of safety nets that come with full employment. And actually, you're not even your own CEO because you don't really even set your hour.

• 16:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  You're managed by an algorithm.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like that, that mindset could come, you know, could come out. That now is, is like shocking to me and appalling. There, there are so many people who have, you know, we, we just, we talk about these people as essential workers, yet we treat them as if they are completely inessential. And, and it's, it's, I, I really, I just, you know, it's discouraging to me that people don't have more empathy for the people who are, who are, it's discouraging me that you could have so little empathy, I guess, that you, that you might not see, see that as a problem. And meanwhile, there's, you know, there's, there's a thing going on in San Francisco right now.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  There was a, a, a driver, I believe it's an Uber driver, maybe this driver who, um, you know, was assaulted by some people who, who, uh, you know, who worked because he had asked them to wear his mat, wear a mask in the car.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  You know, people are out there scrambling and working hard and like putting themselves at risk so that other people are able to be at home and, you know, and sit there on, on Zoom and Google Docs and, you know, get your work done and check your workflow in Asana, all that kind of stuff, you know?

• 17:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  It, it happens because other people ventured out, um, and took risks.

• 18:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Totally.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  And I just hope we think about them.

• 18:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So, speaking of giraffe money, we have to build on this. I did want to get a chance to ask you what you think about this whole NFT craze, the non-fungible tokens and the fact that Bitcoin is going to the moon. And I think you still have like, uh, you know, a mountain full of Bitcoins sitting in some wired server somewhere, uh, back from your wired days. So, um, does this all seem

• 18:26Speaker 01

  They burned that, actually.

• 18:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  So what happened?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  They burned that.

• 18:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  They burned the server? So tell the stories that, I mean, we should tell the story of the wired Bitcoin.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, this, yeah, I mean, this wasn't me, but it was, uh, it was while I was there and it's, it's pretty amazing. Um, uh, I believe it was Bob McMillan, who's now at the Wall Street Journal, um, who, uh, had a, uh, had a Butterfly Labs Bitcoin mine and it was in Wired's like gadget closet, you know? And it's just in there churning away mining Bitcoin and

• 19:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what year was this?

• 19:03Speaker 01

  I'm gonna say 2012, maybe 2013. And at first it's just like in there, you know, churning out stuff at like whatever Bitcoin was at the time, you know, even when it was like a hundred bucks a coin, it was not, you know, like nobody really thought about it as being a big problem. Then all of a sudden Bitcoin shot up like a, I, I think it was like a thousand bucks or something, you know? I'm not, not gonna get these numbers right, but, and it became a problem and people were like, wait a second, this stuff could really, you know, like it's a thousand bucks today, it could be 50,000 bucks tomorrow, which I don't think anyone believed, but, uh,

• 19:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Here we are.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, here we are. And there were, there was a big debate internally over what we should do with it. And, and I remember, uh, I remember Adam Rogers, who's a longtime, uh, writer and editor there, who, uh, who's on the, the science desk there, um,

• 19:54Speaker 01

  You know, making the case that like we should, we should give that money to charity. We should like, like there are people sleeping on the street and like, you know, if we're gonna, you know, we can't, we can't keep this and sit on this, sit on this, this Bitcoin stash because it could, you know, in some ways compromise our, our integrity. I don't necessarily think I believe that, but you know, I mean, I feel wired to still be sitting on, could just be sitting on the Bitcoin. And at this point, I think, I think we're talking like, I think it was, I want to say it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 Bitcoin. You know, some like, they didn't mind several, but not like a lot. Um, you know, not like, it didn't have like, didn't have like a thousand Bitcoin or whatever. It wasn't that early.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  And anyway, uh, the, at some point after, after a lot of arguing over it, I don't remember who was arguing what side other than Adam. Uh, because I remember Adam was, was, was, was in the way that he can be sometimes very animated about it. Uh, uh, they made the decision basically to, to get rid of the key. And so they, you know, they burned the, they burned the key and there's, once they did that, I mean, there's no getting it back.

• 20:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can't get it.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  And, um, so, so those, yeah, I mean, so, and actually we were talking about this the other day. Uh, I was talking about it with your, with your, I think with your former guest, Ryan Mack. I'm not sure. Maybe, actually maybe it was you, Alex, uh, when we were talking last week, but it would, it would be like,

• 21:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  How much would it be worth?

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Like when they, when they, when they trashed it, I mean, if it was, I, I mean, let's say it was 10 Bitcoin. I don't know. It'd be worth what? Half a million bucks now? You know? I mean, it was, it was, it was a substantial, you know? It's a substantial amount of money now in a way that it wasn't when they got rid of it.

• 21:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you, well.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  So I can't believe they got rid of it. And what do I think about NFTs? I think they're.

• 21:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, wait, before.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  I think they're, I think they're, yeah. Okay. Okay. So I'm sorry. So.

• 21:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's do that. How, like, just, just give us your approximate guess of how much money was in that wired Bitcoin server? How much money did they burn? Must have been, I mean, it had to be more than 10.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  I think at the time it was, I, I, I just don't remember. I'm sorry. I mean, it's been several years. Uh, I believe it was 10 to 15 Bitcoins that they had. And so I believe at the time it would have been 10 to 15, 10 to 15,000 dollars.

• 22:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you kick yourself for not, not buying Bitcoin when you knew it was happening back in the day?

• 22:13Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 22:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm kicking myself for not buying at 20,000.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  I mean, if you were, if, if, if you think that way though, like. You just have to, you have to think like, uh, I don't know, no. And I think, I think you have to think about like, um, I think you have to think about what is, when, what, like, what is, uh,

• 22:39Speaker 01

  you can't just think about what could have been. You gotta think about, you gotta kind of go back to that moment in time and really think about it. But I, there, there was a, uh, there was a point in time when it gives moto, I, I, I want to say it was John Herman. I, maybe, maybe someone else, uh, who was there bought some Bitcoin for a story and it, when it was still trading for, you know, pennies, a coin. And they like had to send a muddy order to somebody like who literally went by the name Morpheus, you know? Okay. Like, I mean, it's, it's, you know, who could have, who could have seen that it, that it, that it, uh, you know, it, that it became that? I, I actually did buy some Bitcoin, uh, which I wish I still was holding, um,

• 23:21Speaker 01

  uh, the, uh, for a, for a story one time and like, it was, I got beat by Cash Hill, um, who wrote another story about living on Bitcoins for a week, which is what I wanted to do. But you know, like, when you think about like, the, I, I heard someone making the case, like, when you think about the million dollar pizzas or whatever, or whatever Cash spent, you know, she spent some fortune on a, uh, you know, on a, on a Bitcoin sushi dinner. I mean, it wasn't worth anything back then, you know? And it became worth stuff because people bought pizza and sushi dinners. Like, that's, that's why it's worth something now. It's, I don't know. Do you think it's gonna crash?

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Uh, uh, you know, when I said about not predicting the future earlier? I mean, I, I think it's, I, I think it's less likely to have a, I think it's less likely to be valueless now than it was because there's so many institutional people in it. I have no idea where, where, you know, the money is going, you know, what's happening with it, you know?

• 24:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can I talk about NFTs? Yeah, yeah, let's do it after the break because it's a good cliffhanger and I seem it seems like you're gonna have a response to it. So why don't we do that? Play the ad and then we'll come back and we'll we'll go bonkers on NFTs, taking this in a direction we never anticipated, but let's have some fun. We'll be right back on the Big Technology Podcast with Matt Honan. Stick around and we'll see you on the other side of this break. This episode is brought to you by AppPoint. 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 AppPoint does. For 25 years, they've been

• 25:01Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 25:44Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 26:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  their front door. That's ironwell.com/bigtechnology. Learn how to stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

• 26:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back for the second half of the Big Technology Podcast with Matt Honan, Executive Editor at BuzzFeed News. He hired me into the brand-new Silicon Valley Bureau at BuzzFeed in 2015, and it's nice to be back on the line with you, Matt.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Great to talk to you, Alex.

• 26:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, appreciate you being here. Why don't we start by defining what NFTs are? And then it seemed like you were about to say that they're ridiculous. So I'd just love to hear your thoughts on the whole moment that we're having right now with these things.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  I wasn't about to say they're ridiculous. I mean, I was about to say, I think it's very cool.

• 27:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, well, let's define it first, because, I mean, I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around how someone could sell a JPEG for $70 billion or $70 million, but, sorry, yeah, I'll give you...

• 27:29Speaker 01

  I think if you define it as not like a JPEG that's sold, but as a unique digital object, that's the way to think about it.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  And I think if you define it that way, that it's a digital object that is one of a kind. I think that's a, you know, I think that is a way to think about it where you can understand why it might be exciting.

• 27:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  But the digital, yeah, like, digital stuff is, you know, replicable on pixels anywhere. If I buy a painting, at least that painting hangs in my house. If I buy a digital object, anyone can see it on the web. I can't display it. I mean, I guess I could buy a screen and put it up there, but anyone could buy a screen, put it up there. So what's going on here?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  I mean, I can put a replica of the Mona Lisa in my house tomorrow, right?

• 28:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's true.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  I mean, like, you can replicate anything. You can already do that, and yet art has value.

• 28:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  You know, is this like Deppel's first 5,000 days thing that sold worth $69 million? I got no idea, man. Who knows? I don't know.

• 28:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  So someone just got like, they get like a token which like shows they own the digital artwork? Is that kind of what it is?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically, yeah.

• 28:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, okay.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and...

• 28:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so why do you think this is cool?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's cool when you start thinking about it not just in terms of art. I think it's cool in that when you start thinking about the ability to have a unique digital item that is yours and yours a lot of you may have ownership of. And like, I think art is an easy, is an easy place to start, but I think just in the same way that like, you know, that, that, that you didn't used to be able to really use Bitcoin for anything except drugs, um, that you'll, that you'll at some point be able to do, to, to, to buy and sell other things. Um, you know, there's some weird stuff, like there's that, uh,

• 29:26Speaker 01

  like there's that, that tweet that Jack Dorsey, uh, you know, offered up as a, as an NFT, you know? And so the tweet is always just gonna exist like on Twitter anyway. His person is setting up my Twitter tweet, but someone else is gonna, I own the NFT of the tweet, I think is how it works. It's bizarre and, and,

• 29:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  What prevents Jack from selling an NFT of the same tweet, just on a different? Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'm just so dubious of this whole thing.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  I mean, I think what presents, I mean, I think, I think you could, uh, right, like, could you fork the, the tweet? I don't know, uh, maybe, um, and, and have a, you know, have a like, have like, yeah, it's all made up. Yeah. But you could, uh, I don't know. I mean, I, I think it's an interesting way to transfer ownership, you know? What if you're, uh, I don't know. I mean, like, this is gonna sound crazy, but like, what if you're, uh, you know, what if sort of all ownership became something that was transferred through NFTs? You know, not just art, but like anything that you, that you sort of, uh, that you don't have, that you don't necessarily have in your possession.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Like the title to your car, you know, um, I don't know. You know, I, I, I, I, I possess my car, but the, the title, you know, lives on a, lives on a blockchain somewhere. I mean, that's, it's just, just an interesting way to think about ownership. I think there's obviously like all these huge problems with the energy usage that people are talking about, but, uh, you know,

• 30:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because mining Bitcoin at this point is just, and doing Bitcoin transactions takes the carbon of like an absurd amount of computing power.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the energy involved in, in, um, in mining and transferring Bitcoin and, and, and transferring NFTs and doing all the, the, the, is, is, you know, I, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not an expert, but it is apparently, you know, quite significant and, uh, you know, and bad for the planet in ways that we should think about. I don't know. I think, I think being able to provide, to, to prove unique digital ownership is a pretty cool concept.

• 31:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, do you think you'll buy any NFT stuff?

• 31:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think if we put this podcast up?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Not for $69 million.

• 31:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah. Like, but I think if we like, put this podcast up and sold the rights as an NFT,

• 31:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  you know, it would be valuable at all?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  I don't know, Alex. I think you should try it. Why don't you try it?

• 31:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  It'll be fun.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's, it's your podcast. Do it.

• 31:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't even know where to begin.

• 31:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'll have to read some, some guidebook.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  I mean, there's that, there's, there's, there's a service, there's a service that you can, that you can use to sell your tweets, which is the thing that, that, that Dorsey used.

• 32:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah. I put something up on there. It didn't sell.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like, one of the things that I, oh, you did?

• 32:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  I did, yeah. It didn't sell.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Ah, one of the, one of the things I'm gonna think about doing is selling, I, I, is, uh, you know, I, I, I had someone hack my Twitter a long time ago. They posted tweets of, they post, they posted to my Twitter account. And, um, it's always been sort of interesting to me that like, you know, when you look at Twitter's, like, like, I don't own my account, right? Like Twitter owns my account, but I technically own the content in their terms of servicey because I created it. But I own the con, that, you know, the content is mine. Well, I didn't create that. And like, I didn't, uh, you know, I didn't create it. I don't, uh, you know, I don't, I, I didn't, I didn't display it. Someone else did all that. I've, I've been, I've been kind of wanting to sell that tweet just to see like,

• 32:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  That'd be super.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  how that, uh, you know, how, how, how you transfer that, how you, how it works to transfer ownership or something that, that I clearly don't own and didn't make.

• 32:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Could people tell your Twitter was hacked, uh, when they did hack and post that stuff? Because Matt, sometimes your Twitter account, can't tell whether someone's possessed it. I think there was, I think there was one time where, and like, correct me if I get this wrong, but you, you were just like, uh, like tweeting one night, like, oh God, and, and no, not this. Some like, probably reacting to a television show. And I think Bennett, Ben Smith had to call you to make sure you were okay. So.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  It was, it was Game of, it was Game of Thrones.

• 33:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  What happened?

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I guess I can tell this. I, I don't know. Um, yeah, I was watching Game of Thrones and I was just like, sort of reacting to Game of Thrones. I think it was a season finale or something and I treated, I treated like, oh shit, you know, something like, oh my God, you know, I don't know. This looks, this is terrible. I don't know. And it's that, it's that total context collapse thing. And, uh, Marc Andreessen, and then I went to bed. Like, as soon as the show's over. And I guess Marc Andreessen saw the tweets and flagged them to Ben, who flagged them to our security, who like,

• 34:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh my God.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  was trying to like, call me in the middle of the night and my phone turned off. I woke up the next day and there's like all these messages from Ben and our security team like, are you okay?

• 34:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  I said, yeah.

• 34:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Watching Game of Thrones. That's amazing.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  I didn't even know what it's about. Yeah, yeah.

• 34:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  This was before, this was before I was blocked on Twitter by P. Mark.

• 34:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh yeah. I was gonna say, was this the moment when Marc Andreessen turned against journalists?

• 34:33Speaker 01

  I don't think so. This is, this is before he went on the blocking screen. This is when he actually, this is when he actually, uh, followed lots of reporters and had, and was saying those things about how Twitter was his way to inject his thoughts directly into a newsroom or whatever it was he was saying.

• 34:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Yeah. We all go through cycles in life, I suppose. But we're not going to get into the journalists versus VC fight.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  To, to, to, to reiterate, to reiterate that, that fight is dumb. That fight is dumb.

• 34:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's dumb. It's dumb fight. Yeah. We won't, we won't do it. We won't fuel it. Um, all right. But okay. Let's, we have 10 minutes left. Let's, let's talk about San Francisco.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  That sounds great.

• 35:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  You just wrote about it. It sounds like,

• 35:10Speaker 01

  I'm wearing a San Francisco shirt.

• 35:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  You're wearing a San Francisco shirt? Or am I? Oh, Tunnel Records, San Francisco.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Tunnel Records, San Francisco.

• 35:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. So you're ready for it to come back. You're optimistic about it. That's what I got from the piece. You, you wrote this great piece on Substack, by the way. It was happy to see you right there. Uh, even though you're not starting the Substack, but it was cool to see you start something there. Uh, I'm sure lots of people signed up. And you said that you're feeling pretty optimistic about San Francisco coming back. Um, for the last year longer, people said San Francisco's dead and that the pandemic is the death knell. Here, you and I have basically weathered the storm, uh, in the city through the whole pandemic. Uh, what do you think is going to happen here and why are you optimistic?

• 35:56Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess I see people doing interesting things in the city, especially around media. They're like a bunch of like small, interesting media startups in the city now that I think are cool. But I also see people becoming more specifically, more engaged, you know. I do think that, you know, we've got so many problems to solve in San Francisco. It's got just, you know, clearly one of, you know, just a horrible, absolutely just incredible fentanyl crisis, which I think we should call it a fentanyl crisis, not just an opioid crisis, it's a fentanyl crisis.

• 36:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  And it's got, you know, horrible issues with, with people's ability to actually live there, you know. Like if you want to rent an apartment, if you want to buy a house, like good luck, you know. It costs just a shit ton of money to try and do that.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  And, you know, I mean, I think that there are, you know, there's, there's starting to be a little bit of building in San Francisco. Like even people are still fighting it, but you're starting for, I think, for at least the first time since the 20 years that I've lived there, to start seeing a lot more support for, for, for new construction and for affordable construction. And, you know, I'm seeing a lot more people involved in like knowing like what the board of supervisors is doing. I'm, I'm, I think that in some ways like having school board meetings and board supervisors meetings and all these other government meetings happening, you know, on the internet where people can tune in and see them and not have to go to a building and, you know, and be there in person. It encourages participation. And so, I mean, that's encouraging to me.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  I think it's only encouraging though if people are like willing to kind of dive in and start doing things and trying to make a difference. And I certainly hope they are. But also part of the point of that piece was that, I mean, San Francisco's always been a weird fucked up place, right? I mean, from the very beginning. And it's been just this kind of place that's always attracted like weirdos doing weird things, you know, whether they're looking for gold or, you know, coming for the summer of love or, you know, or, you know, whatever. And I think that one of the reasons that there's so many, like, one of the reasons that there are, you know...

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Certainly, there's the like, the origin stories that are connected to Stanford and Ciroc Park and Fairchild Semiconductor and all that kind of stuff. But one of the reasons that there are a lot of tech people in San Francisco is that it was a place where people were trying interesting and different new things, you know? And there's kind of a, you know, there's a great book called What the Dormouse Said about this, but there's kind of a direct line between people like experimenting with drugs and experimenting with technology. And I, you know, I just think that like San Francisco has been a town that's had a lot of booms and busts, and maybe we're having a bust right now, but it'll boom again. It's a beautiful place that's on the ocean, that you can ride your bike across the bridge and be in a national park.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  It's, you know, it's got a lovely climate, even if we do have, you know, fire season now.

• 39:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Fires.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  And people are gonna wanna live there. And this like myth that everybody's vacating San Francisco for Miami, also a great city, but one that's like sinking underground and brutally hot in the summertime, is just, it's ridiculous. You know, people are always talking about people leaving. People are always talking about, you know, about problems. But, you know, before the, you know, 1990s, San Francisco was pretty grim. And yet, the tech boom happened after its grimness. And it's, I don't know, I guess I am a, I guess I'm a hater-hater. So I

• 39:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I feel the same way. I feel the same way. It feels, I get people, why people like other places, but it does feel, I don't know, entitled and elitist for folks to bash what is a great city. And it's like, you know, the line, "Oh, I want more cafes." It's like, all right, go ahead, but don't call San Francisco a shitty city because you wanna drink coffee on the sidewalk, which by the way, you can now because everyone's built outside. So, but like, that stuff to me is a little bit nuts. They tried to draft you to run for mayor at one point. Are you gonna do that?

• 40:25Speaker 01

  No, I tried to draft myself, honestly. But no, I'm not, of course not. I could never do that.

• 40:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think you'd be a great mayor of the city.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, first of all, I would not, but man, what a terrible job that's gotta be, right? Like, man, that's a shitty job.

• 40:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's a hard job.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Maybe you get to be governor, but, or, you know, but, uh, I think it's also super interesting to me that San Francisco politics have become so dominant, and not just San Francisco politicians have become so dominant. You know, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris. It's a, it's a real, like, like, like, all those people come out of San Francisco, uh, local politics. And it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of amazing. Um, but.

• 41:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I interrupted you, sorry.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  I know, it's like, if you think about, if you think about the dot com bust in, um, you know, which, which, which happened in 2000, but really took a couple of years to shake out. Like, lots of interesting stuff started happening in San Francisco in, you know, 2003, four, five, six. Uh, before it was like totally on its feet. You know, I, you know, if there are people who are there just for a job and they want to leave, like, they should be able to go. And I do hope, going back to one of your earlier questions, I do, I do think that, like, we're never gonna go fully back to the office and there is gonna be people who are, who are, you know, working on Zoom, are gonna be working from all over the place. And if they don't want to be in San Francisco, they shouldn't necessarily have to be if they don't, if they don't, if they don't have to be, if they don't have to be in person. You know, I don't know.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  I think these little things will, things will shake out and things will change and they'll be, you know, we'll fix some problems and we'll get new ones.

• 42:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and I, and I think this could be a great reset. I mean, we talked, you talked about how rent is high in San Francisco. It is, but it's dropping because a lot of those folks who are part of, you know, the Zoom world have decided they would rather be somewhere else. So.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, and I think that, like, you need a certain level of rent. You know, you need to be have a, a certain level of affordable rent to have the weird people that make a city weird and enjoyable. When we had Steve Adler on the show, the mayor of Austin, he said, your, your city can, it can be a maker of art and a consumer of art. But once you stop being a maker of art, then your soul's missing. You know, I'm paraphrasing what he said. But you need to have that space for folks to be able to live on, you know, 500 a month in rent. So that weirdness, you know, sort of forms the soul of the city, forms the people making art.

• 43:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, creates a place where people can try and fail things as opposed to have to take a job that pays them $300,000 a year. And so maybe, maybe this will be a good thing. One of the, one of the silver linings of the last year is that San Francisco will be a place where weird can flourish again.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  I hope so. And I hope it's also a place where people who have grown up there can stay there. Where, you know, my wife is, is, as you know, is a nurse. You know, I mean, she, she works with people who commute in from, from hours away. You know, because they can't, you know, especially if they're younger. Because they can't, they haven't been there a while. They can't afford a apartment there. It's, you know, it's, it's, you know, I, I hope it's a place where like, you know, where artists and nurses and teachers and musicians and, and, and, you know, people who, you know, are, are the soul of the city can live. Um, and I think that all comes down to housing. I think, you know, when you think about the homelessness crisis, the people experiencing homelessness crisis, that's, that's driven the housing. You know, it's like so much of what people complain about with San Francisco can be solved by, by starting housing.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, it's encouraging me that we're starting to see a little bit more get built. And it's encouraging me to see that some of the, you know, some of the focus that's been happening out of, uh, City Hall, including today, is on, is on livability. And I think when, when you really start thinking about what makes a city livable, it's people's ability to fucking live there, right? It's like, I mean, that sounds, that sounds just stupid. But like, if you can't actually

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Live in the city because you can't afford to. I mean, it's not gonna be able to see it. It's not gonna be like, who cares how many slow streets you have. You gotta have the house.

• 44:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. All right. Before we leave, I want to ask you about the fires.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Uh. What about them?

• 44:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, since, I mean, you've written, you know, pretty eloquently about the fire season here. That's now become a fact of life. I think you wrote, you know, the only thing we can think about are the fires. I'm kind of curious, like where, where you think that, do we, are we gonna have a fire season on the West Coast? Every year. I mean, this year was particularly brutal. I feel like we were in a cloud of smoke for what, two straight months?

• 45:13Speaker 01

  It was awful. Yeah. I don't know. I don't remember how long it was. I just remember it was just absolutely awful. I mean, especially, you know, combined on top of the pandemic, it was just, I mean, you know, it was terrible and it's, and it's like destroyed some of those homes and their lives. And Peter Aldis has written a lot about it and everything that I've read that he's written has made me discouraged that it's gonna get better in the time.

• 45:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Seems to be Peter's outlook. Yeah. He knows too much. That's the issue.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Yes. So, I mean, the, you know, I mean, the trend is certainly they're getting worse. Um. No, we haven't. Uh, I don't know what, what the snow pack is like right now, but it was, it was low. Uh, you know, the last time I saw, which I think was, it may have just been beginning of March, which is not encouraging for fire season. Um.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  I think it's a fact of life in the West, right? I mean, it was happening in Colorado, Montana, I mean, in, in ways that it didn't, didn't used to. I mean, that, that, to me, like, that's the thing. That's the, like, that, like, that's the thing that, that is really alarming about living in San Francisco and California and the West and the world, you know, it's like, oh shit, what have we done to the planet? And how are we, you know, are, are we, are we, are we going to be able to do anything to fix it? I hate to think about. Like my, my wife's cousin was emailing us and they're like, well, we wanted to come out in August, but we're worried that there's gonna be, that it's gonna be very smoky. And I mean, my response was, yeah, I don't think you should come in August. Like, I wouldn't plan a vacation in California in August right now.

• 46:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, it's, yeah, it's just been a fact of life here for the last bunch of years. And, and I, I remember when I moved here, I had no idea that this could be a thing. Like, I was from New York, we don't do forest fires out there. And then one of the first summers I must have been here, it just burnt. It's like the third biggest fire in California history, which has since been supplanted a couple of times, the Valley Fire. And you had this idea to send us up to where the Valley Fire had burned and fly a drone into some of the structures to give people a view of like what this was like. And it was my first time actually seeing the destruction that these wildfires could cause.

• 47:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it was absolutely, you know, astonishing how, how destructive these things could be. And it was also a pretty good, good assignment, I would say. I mean, I appreciate you sending me there because I think, you know, that video was viewed by like six million people on Facebook to bring it full circle. But that was like a good use of the algorithm because people, you know, it was a 360 video with, with the drone and people could actually move around and take a look at being what it was like to be in, in that place.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  It's hard to like get the scope of the devastation without seeing it or smelling it with your, you know, with your own body. And then again, like, you know, like, actually, I, I will weigh in on the tech versus media thing. I think people, you know, I mean, like, I think technology has had so many positive impacts in the world. And, um, you know, and, and like, and journalists do often talk about them, but it's just like, it's not the only thing we talk about when we talk about tech anymore. And I think that's been a shock for a lot of people.

• 48:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, totally.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  360 video is pretty cool. Unless you see stuff that you couldn't, unless you experienced that you couldn't see.

• 48:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And you see, so I think like, then you saw, I know we're running out of time, but you saw Mark Zuckerberg doing his presentation for Oculus and he's got the video of like, I think flooding in Puerto Rico behind him after the hurricane. And it's like, there, there's a, yeah, maybe there, that's that disconnect we're talking about. You know, being in the bubble, being not in the bubble, like, maybe it's not the best idea.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  It seemed opportunistic. Yeah.

• 48:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's powerful to show this stuff, but maybe, and I don't want to say like journalists are the only one that should be showing this. Cause obviously it's not the case, but like, if you're doing a product demo, even though that is the case, it's a, it's a fine line to walk.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Cool, Matt. Great seeing you. Thanks for joining.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Great to see you. Thanks for having me.

• 49:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Always a pleasure to talk. I have to, we'll have to have you back.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  I hope I wasn't incoherent. I probably was.

• 49:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, you're extremely coherent, as usual.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  I'm a little drunk, so.

• 49:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Well, we'll have to make sure we get you in that state for your next appearance. So it is, it is 5:00 PM on a Friday.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  It is. Yeah, I know. I'm starting drinking it in.

• 49:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Nice. All right. Well, hopefully we can, we can, yeah, we'll have beers next time.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Cool. Thanks, Alex.

• 49:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Cool. Thanks for joining, Matt. Great having you on. Where can people find you online?

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Uh, they can find me at BuzzFeed News.

• 49:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Wait, is that, is that, is that the right answer? Should I, was this, was this a bit of a question? I'm sorry.

• 49:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, no, no. I didn't even speak to BuzzFeed PR about having you on.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 50:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  But like, you know, we have you on, then you say, hey, you can find me at, you know, at M A T on Twitter. And you won't be able to tell if I'm hacked or not.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Okay, I see. Can you, do you want to do that again?

• 50:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, no, I'm gonna run this live, but go ahead. Uh, Matt, where can people find you on the internet?

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Uh, they can find me on Twitter at Matt with one T, at M A T.

• 50:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  And maybe I've been hacked, maybe I haven't, you'll never know.

• 50:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Perfect. All right, great. Well,

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Maybe I'm just an NFT.

• 50:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'll be following you there and hopefully seeing you in person sometime soon. And that will do it for this week on the Big Technology Podcast. A big thanks to Mat Honan, Executive Editor at BuzzFeed News for joining us and thanks to all of you for listening. It's been a pleasure having you here as it is every week. Speaking of which, we'll be back next Wednesday with a new show. I think we're having Carol Codwaller, who broke the Cambridge Analytica story, and Yael Eisenstadt, who worked at Elections on Facebook and has since defected and become a big critic. So that should be an interesting discussion. I hope to see you Wednesday for that. If you have reached this show for the first time and have

• 51:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  listened to the end, well, that's pretty good. It would be great if you give us a subscribe. If you're a longtime listener and you're here too, that's also pretty good. If you could rate us, that would be a big help. Big thanks to Red Circle for hosting the podcast and selling ads and to Nate Guatini, our great editor, for always coming through with a talented edit. Thank you, Nate. And thanks again to all of you. We will see you next Wednesday. That will do it for us here on the Big Technology Podcast. Take care and have a good one.