SpaceX launches humans to space / Facebook's ongoing moderation controversy / Sonos Arc's convincing surround sound

Stories from this episode: Blaming protesters for COVID-19 spread ignores the bigger threats to health 5G coronavirus conspiracy theorists are endangering the workers who keep networks running Telehealth wasn’t designed for non-English speakers The pandemic has made it harder to buy a new laptop Byte flight The United States will cut ties with the World Health Organization, says President Trump FCC extends deadline for ISPs to quit charging customers who use their own equipment K-pop stans overwhelm app after Dallas police ask for videos of protesters SpaceX successfully launches first crew to orbit, ushering in new era of spaceflight A rocket launch can’t unite us until the space world acknowledges our divisions Watch NASA astronauts fly SpaceX’s Crew Dragon using touchscreens SpaceX’s Crew Dragon successfully docks with the space station What the future of the space station looks like after SpaceX’s historic launch Meet the cute stuffed dinosaur that hitched a ride on SpaceX’s historic launch SpaceX is launching its latest batch of internet satellites, including one with a visor Trump’s Twitter order violates the First Amendment, new lawsuit claims Facebook won’t take any action on Trump’s post about shootings in Minnesota Facebook employees walk out in protest of Donald Trump’s posts Twitter takes action against Rep. Matt Gaetz for glorifying violence In leaked audio, Mark Zuckerberg expressed ‘disgust’ with Trump’s posts Mark Zuckerberg defends hands-off Trump policy to employees after walkout Nine things we learned from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg facing his employees Ban them all What other social networks can learn from Snapchat’s rebuke of Trump Huawei P40 Pro review: there’s a catch HBO Max won’t hit AT&T data caps, but Netflix and Disney Plus will The Sonos Arc puts convincing surround sound in a single soundbar Here’s our best look yet at Google’s new Android TV streaming device Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on The Vergecast, Lauren Grush joins us to talk about the big SpaceX launch. We talked to Casey Newton about Facebook's always controversial moderation decisions. And then we actually talk about some gadgets: Sonos Ark, HBO Max data caps, Huawei P40. It's all coming up on The Vergecast now.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Welcome to Sephora. I'm looking for a perfume that's not too perfumey. I got you.

• 0:51Speaker 03

  Serum moisturizer or moisturizer serum?

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Let's get into layering. My concealer is making me look worse? Sounds like the wrong shade. Let's get you matched.

• 1:02Speaker 04

  There's only one store that really gets what you're going for. Get beauty from people who get beauty. Only at Sephora.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Hi, I, uh... Let's get you a basket.

• 1:18Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Vox Media Podcast Situation. That's how I feel about everything. It's not, not a moment for timely jokes, but I'm Neil. I'm your friend. Dieter Bohn is here, also your friend. We got a big show this week. Lauren Grush is going to join us to talk about the historic SpaceX Crew Dragon launch, what's going on in space generally. A lot. Space, very busy. Casey Newton is going to join us to talk about Facebook moderation, so like, what he usually talks to us about. But obviously with the protests, with Trump's various posts, there's a lot of activity there. There was some leaked audio from Mark Zuckerberg. We're going to unpack that. And at the end of the show, Dieter and I are actually going to talk about some gadgets. Yeah. There's some gadget news this week, so we're going to do that at the end of the show. I want to start, as always, with some updates on the pandemic. I think it's kind

• 2:03Nilay Patel?

  of a combo platter. There is bigger news in the world this week. I think listeners know that by now that we, we want to focus on that stuff as much as we can. But also provide the escape that people ask us to provide. So I just want to give the updates on both the pandemic and some coverage of the protests that are all over the country right now. So it is week 12, 12 weeks since Donald Trump promised the world a website where you could go get tested for the coronavirus. Just going to keep counting. I'm assuming it's not going to happen. I will say a lot of states have built their own testing apparatuses, but the nationwide testing apparatus that I think we will need to manage the pandemic and the coronavirus going forward, still not there 12 weeks since then. Trump is also insisting that we cut ties with the World Health Organization.

• 2:48Nilay Patel?

  That's a big deal. You can read about that on the site. Some of the second order effects of the coronavirus, the pandemic that we keep talking about, Zoe Schiffer wrote a piece for us called Bite Flight, which is about tech workers moving out of San Francisco. There's a lot of, I think, underreported on antipathy towards San Francisco from the big tech worker community. And now that companies like Google and Facebook are all working from home or moving to work from home policies, people are going to leave San Francisco. So that's a really interesting piece. A lot of quotes in there. Check that out from Zoe. Monica Chen wrote a piece for us that we have actually been tracking since the very beginning of sort of the pandemic, which is supply chains for laptops. So what you have is skyrocketing demands as people are working from home, as kids are learning

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  from home, and then supply constraints, because the supply chains in China have went dark for a while. And those curves, I think, have started to hit. So it's really hard to buy a laptop now. Monica dug into that. Nicole Wetzman, our excellent health reporter, wrote a piece about telehealth. There was a lot of, sort of before the pandemic hit, there was a lot of excitement about telehealth. Obviously, with everybody working from home, doctors are doing more telemedicine. It turns out there are some consequences of telemedicine, one of which importantly is that if you don't speak English in this country, it is harder to get medical care remotely. So check that out from Nicole. And then this one, to me, is just like one of the more, I think we think of conspiracy theories as something that happened on the internet without consequence, but James

• 4:15Nilay Patel?

  Vincent talked to network engineers in the UK who are being harassed and attacked because of the 5G conspiracy theory around the coronavirus. And there's hundreds of incidents of abuse towards these engineers have been reported. He actually talked to some of those engineers. That's a great piece. Go check that out. The protests, there's some stuff that I want to call in our coverage. My favorite one is that K-pop fans have been overwhelming the apps the police are using, particularly in Dallas, to ask for videos of protests with fan cams of K-pop, which is amazing. And then on a more serious note, the combination of the protests and the pandemic. I think a lot of people are expecting the pandemic to get worse because of the protests,

• 4:59Nilay Patel?

  or the virus spread to get worse because of protests. Nicole has a great piece about how there are larger threats to health than the protests, particularly the use of tear gas, particularly the underlying racial dynamics that have made both the pandemic and the protests bigger than you would otherwise hope. So we have a lot of coverage beyond that. That's just some stuff I wanted to call out, let you all know that we have the coverage of that stuff on the site. We know that our audience wants us to talk about all the other things too. So as always, start there, check out the site. There's so much of that coverage there. We are really focused on it. We are really focused on coverage of the protests. There are an immense number of Verge stories inside of the protests. And who gets to make the videos, who gets to share the videos, how the videos are operating.

• 5:43Nilay Patel?

  TC wrote a piece today about swatting, which is a very common online harassment tactic that is built around the notion that the police will conduct violence in America. So there are just multiple, multiple angles and the things that we cover all the time. That's all on the site. Okay, there was a rocket launch though. Lauren, you're here. Hi Lauren.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  Hi.

• 6:01Nilay Patel?

  How's it going?

• 6:02Speaker 05

  You know, it's going as best as can be expected.

• 6:06Nilay Patel?

  Lauren, you actually wrote a piece about rocket launches in the broader context and how they play together. I want to get to that, but let's start at the start. Crew Dragon launched, historic event. Tell us about it.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, so it really is a launch. I mean, depending on how you want to set the, you know, starting line, it could be, you could say it's been six years in the making, a decade in the making, or really since SpaceX first formed, you know, 18 years ago. It was the first time that SpaceX actually launched people to orbit. It's been their express purpose since they were formed. And it was also a big deal for NASA. It's the first time in nearly a decade that people have launched from the US since the end of the Shuttle program to orbit. And it was also the first time that a private company, like a purely private vehicle, sent people to orbit. So there are a lot of firsts associated

• 7:02Speaker 05

  with this launch, which is why it was a really big deal for a lot of people in the space community.

• 7:07Nilay Patel?

  Let's start with just that first of a private company. Just how does the interaction between SpaceX and NASA work here, right? They're obviously NASA astronauts. Are they just like, is it like calling for an Uber? Like, how does that relationship work?

• 7:22Speaker 05

  I mean, you joke, but that is kind of what NASA was going for with this program. So it's really important to note that NASA has always used contractors to build its stuff. The Shuttle was built by contractors, the Saturn V rocket built by contractors. The main difference is that NASA always had key oversight and input in the design and development process. So NASA knew everything that was going on. They were constantly checking in with the contractors and making sure, you know, that they had a voice in this process. And then, once the vehicles were done, NASA owned and operated them. So it was not really a commercial transaction. It was the government in charge of these processes. With this program,

• 8:03Speaker 05

  the commercial crew program that the Crew Dragon launched for, the idea was, all right, let's take NASA a little bit out of that process. You know, they'll be the customer in this scenario, and they're going to pay, they're going to put in some money for development. So they gave SpaceX partial money to develop the Crew Dragon. But in reality, they're the ones that are going to be like, I want to pay a ticket to ride my... To put my astronauts on your vehicle, you're going to be in charge of design, you're going to be in charge of production, you're going to be in charge of testing, and then you're going to own and operate that vehicle when it's done. There's some, if you, if you read my coverage on theverge.com, there's some nuance with that because NASA was really involved with the process.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  You know, because when you launch humans, you know, it takes on a whole new standard for the agency. Like, they are our pride and joy for the country. So whether or not this was a purely commercial transaction is up for debate, but it was definitely very different than the way NASA used to do things. And I think, for all intents and purposes, we can say this was a commercial vehicle as opposed to the other vehicles that NASA has launched in the past with humans.

• 9:17Speaker 06

  So my big question here is, is this what NASA, if it had its druthers and could get whatever budget it wanted out of Congress, would want to do? Or are they shifting their entire organization to be contracting and licensing from outside private companies and just buying tickets on ships instead of building the ships themselves via contractors or whatever? Is that how NASA wants to operate going forward? Or is it a thing that they have to do because they can't get the funding to build their own damn rockets?

• 9:46Speaker 05

  I think it's both, actually. And it's a little more nuanced. You know, like you said, NASA's budget is limited. We're not in the Cold War anymore, so we're not getting these huge increases for the NASA budget like they did during the Apollo program that sent humans to the moon. So yeah, they do have, they face this reality of, okay, if we want to do these big, bold things in space, let's let the private sector take over these things that we've been doing for years and years, like sending people to low Earth orbit. That's something we've been doing for 50 years. We can, we know how to do that. So it's like, okay, NASA is going to give that to the private sector, then at the same time, stimulate the private sector because that they own these vehicles now. It's not, it's not NASA's vehicle, it's SpaceX's vehicle,

• 10:31Speaker 05

  so they could potentially use it to make their own market later on by selling it to tourists or selling it to private citizens. And then NASA- NASA can take the rest of the money that it does get from Congress and put it into these like very big ambitious programs, notably right now that's going back to the moon with this Artemis program. So it's like, okay, you know, we're gonna get a cheap investment, a cheap ticket to space basically for our astronauts while we spend the big bucks on these other programs and do more ambitious things.

• 11:02Nilay Patel?

  So that commercial crew program, it's been years in the making, right?

• 11:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, so the contracts to SpaceX, and we shouldn't, shouldn't forget Boeing is also part of this program. SpaceX is just the first one to launch crew, but there's two companies, SpaceX and Boeing. They got their contracts in 2014 to start building and developing these vehicles and start testing them. So it's been six years since those contracts, but really it's been a decade of NASA testing out this process because it didn't start with commercial crew. It started with commercial cargo. So they tried this new method with, they're like, okay, let's have the private sector send supplies to the International Space Station. Like, we know how to launch crap

• 11:46Speaker 05

  into space, basically. You know, like, that's something we've been doing for years. We can, we can trust the space industry to pick, pick that up and do that for us. We don't need to be in charge of that anymore. And so it started with cargo. It was called the COTS program. And then that, that model, this, that contracting model that I was talking about, was transformed during the Obama administration into the commercial crew program to, so we're like, okay, we're gonna take a step up from cargo. We're gonna actually launch people this way.

• 12:17Nilay Patel?

  So this rocket that launched with the Crew Dragon capsule onboard, that is SpaceX Falcon 9, that's the, it's the familiar rocket, right?

• 12:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:26Nilay Patel?

  What was, was there a process to adapt that rocket to change it anywhere? Or do they just put the capsule on top?

• 12:32Speaker 05

  I mean, let's just say that the Falcon 9 got way more scrutiny.

• 12:38Speaker 05

  That it probably ever did, you know, just because we were putting people on this. And there was, um, there was actually some controversy that it's not even around anymore, but it was for a while during this development because SpaceX is a very different policy than they did during the shuttle about how it loads the vehicle with propellant. So a lot of aerospace experts prefer that the vehicle is fueled before astronauts get on board because fueling is considered a dangerous event. And, you know, that, that's not a bad argument. I mean, actually a SpaceX, a Falcon 9 rocket exploded during a, while it was being fueled on the ground once during a ground test. So there is some precedent for being a little nervous during the fueling.

• 13:22Speaker 05

  But instead SpaceX likes to fuel its rockets after the astronauts have gotten on board already. And there was a lot of controversy over that decision. NASA demanded that SpaceX, you know, prove that this process was safe by doing it a number of times prior to this launch and demonstrating that, you know, it wasn't going to destroy the rocket while people were on board. And also, or there are tons of other safety measures put in place too. The Crew Dragon, for instance, has an abort capability that the space shuttle didn't even have. So if the Falcon 9 were to have some kind of failure during flight, there's actually

• 14:03Speaker 05

  thrusters inside the Crew Dragon that can lift the capsule up and away from that rocket and carry the astronauts to safety. So there's all these redundancies in place because NASA was very, you know, protective of its astronauts and they will continue to be protective of their astronauts. So yeah, the Falcon 9 got a lot of eyes on it during this entire development.

• 14:23Nilay Patel?

  And then obviously the Falcon 9 is, is famous for being reusable. We've watched it land, this particular Falcon 9 landed on a, on a drone ship. This was a new one, right? It was like, just a simple, like, you want to use a new one for the astronauts.

• 14:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, but it's funny that you say it. Like, it didn't even take that long. I saw some, something that NASA is already giving the okay of SpaceX using a used rocket for future crew missions.

• 14:49Nilay Patel?

  I feel like we're gonna have to move away from the phrasing "used rocket." Like, it sounds like they're gonna get like an 89 Celica and like blast that off into space. Like, it's, they're gonna refurbish it.

• 15:00Speaker 05

  Let's just say I get in trouble when I say the word "used" because they don't, they're not pleased with me. They want, they like "previously flown."

• 15:07Nilay Patel?

  Flown, that's the term?

• 15:08Speaker 05

  "Fight proven" is the industry term.

• 15:11Nilay Patel?

  Fight proven, that's a good one. That's way better. Previously flown also sounds like you're buying like a certified used car.

• 15:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:18Nilay Patel?

  Gently used rocket. And then, as I was watching the stream, a thing that struck me is, there were a lot of shots of SpaceX in Hawthorne operating the rocket, not the sort of standard NASA Mission Control that you think of. But it still took off from Kennedy Space Center. How does that dynamic work?

• 15:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, so this launch was really kind of a team effort from multiple different sites. It included, like, Mission Control was in Hawthorne, because this was a SpaceX launch. So, the shots, when they were in charge of the launch, and they were the ones in charge of communicating with the crew while they were flying to the International Space Station. At the same time, you had crew, or you had people in Mission Control at Kennedy Space Center who were operating the ground systems and just making sure that, you know, the launch happened okay. And then you also have people at Johnson Space Center, they're the ones in charge of the International Space Station. So, once they got to the International Space Station, there was a lot of coordinating between Hawthorne and JSC to make sure that process went smoothly.

• 16:21Nilay Patel?

  So now that Crew Dragon is docked with the ISS, who's in charge of it?

• 16:25Speaker 05

  Johnson Space Center is in charge of operating. But I'm assuming they're still very much in contact with SpaceX throughout this process, especially because we need to find out when the astronauts are coming home. We don't know when they're coming home yet, but NASA is gonna make that determination in a couple of weeks.

• 16:40Nilay Patel?

  Is that all get handed over back to SpaceX when they come home? Like, what's the plan there?

• 16:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, essentially. I mean, it's still gonna be a constant, like, a very collaborative process, but really, that's the point of this whole thing, is SpaceX is in charge. And so, they are in charge of the Crew Dragon, and it's traffic, you know, and how it flies through space.

• 16:59Nilay Patel?

  When you say they don't know when they're coming home, is that they don't know inside of a window specifically? Or you're just up there until we decide you come home?

• 17:08Speaker 05

  So this was supposed to be a quick trip. Really, I think it was supposed to last like a week or two originally because it was just supposed to be a test. It would just be like, can they get to the station? Can it survive on the station for a little bit? And can it come home? The problem was the commercial crew program, like any space development program, suffered its fair share of delays. And originally, these launches were supposed to happen in 2017. Obviously, it's three years later. And so the problem was our only other option to get to the space station was the Russian Soyuz rocket. We've been paying the Russians to put astronauts on those vehicles for the last decade. And our seats were running out with them as the delays continued with commercial crew. And so right now, they've only, well,

• 17:51Speaker 05

  before these two astronauts launched, we only had one person, one American, on the International Space Station. And that's a really low number. We usually like to have more than that. So it was like, OK, we don't have a lot of people on the space station. Why don't we keep Bob and Doug, the two astronauts, up there for an extended period of time so they can get some work done? Because they need to do maintenance. There's possibly some spacewalks they might have to do on the outside of the space station. And then, once they get that work done, we'll make a determination of when they can come home. But the max amount of time that they can stay up there is really dependent on the solar panels, on the Crew Dragon. Apparently, the atmosphere, there's a thin atmosphere in space where they're at right now. And that's degrading the solar panels over time. So they're trying to get a better understanding

• 18:36Speaker 05

  of how long that process lasts. But I think the max for now is they can stay up there for four months and then come home. But we'll find out, I guess, in the coming weeks.

• 18:46Nilay Patel?

  The idea that there's like a limited number of seats that we can lease from Russia on the Soyuz is also, it's like... So much of this is just weird, like not the way I think about space. Like, are we gonna get a Groupon for more seats on the next SpaceX rockets at some point? Like, we ran out of tickets? Like, there's a coupon book for Soyuz? Like, it's very strange.

• 19:08Speaker 05

  Well, to be fair, that was a conscious decision. NASA didn't want to continue paying Russia, and they wanted to eventually transfer full time to these commercial vehicles. So the expectation was we were gonna stop purchasing these Soyuz seats so that the commercial crew program could continue. But they actually purchased one more, like, safety seat on the Soyuz for this fall. So there's actually gonna be another American. It's Kate Rubens who's gonna launch this fall on a Soyuz. But now that we're going forward, the idea is we're gonna stop paying the Russians tickets, and then we're gonna trade seats on our vehicles. So we could still, we'll still have Americans flying on the Soyuz, but we could potentially have Russian cosmonauts on the Crew Dragon or on Boeing's vehicles as well.

• 19:50Nilay Patel?

  So when the Crew Dragon leaves the station, whenever it leaves, how does it come back? What's the mechanism? It just falls through atmosphere, heat shields, doesn't burn up, parachute? Like, standard 60s Apollo?

• 20:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. I'm sure the engineers will tell you there's quite more than that, but that's essentially it. You know, they have protections in place so that the Crew Dragon, you know, stays intact while it comes back through the atmosphere. And then, yeah, they have a suite of four parachutes that deploy, and then they splash down in the Atlantic Ocean near Florida, where they'll be recovered by a SpaceX recovery vehicle that will take the crew and the capsule both to shore.

• 20:28Nilay Patel?

  And is the capsule reusable?

• 20:30Speaker 05

  It is not at the moment, but I believe that is something that is in the works. The problem is the ocean. You know, once they, once they hit the water, that saltwater is really corrosive, and it does a lot of damage to the vehicle. But I think they are working on ways to make it reusable.

• 20:45Nilay Patel?

  And then the capsule itself, you know, you watch the stream, you see them, they're just like using touchscreens.

• 20:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, we gotta talk about this.

• 20:53Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I just, I understand, like, there's a, it's mostly computerized and like, to some extent, they're just like along for the ride. But like, are there just like Tesla touchscreens in there? Did Elon, was he just like, pull them out of a Model 3 and let's go? Is it hardened? Like, how does that work?

• 21:10Speaker 05

  I do not know the origin of the touchscreens, but I did get, I did get to interact with them a bit when I went to Hawthorne once and they were showing off the interface. And I feel like the touchscreens, honestly, are the biggest, they're the ones that sent the biggest shockwaves through the space community because if you look at the Space Shuttle console, it's like hundreds of switches, of gadgets, joysticks, you know, it looks like a cockpit. And this really looks like, you know, like you said, a Tesla interface. And even Doug Hurley, one of the astronauts, mentioned that it was kind of jarring for him at first because they're both pilots.

• 21:52Speaker 05

  And so they're very used to being able to have this active control with something that can grab on to. But he said, after a while, you know, it became pretty easy to control. And I mean, it looks pretty great. Actually, my husband was saying, you know, when we were watching it, he's like, this makes me feel like we're in the 21st century. Because really, all they did to fly the Dragon was press, you know, like the translational movements on the screen. Or if they needed to rotate, they have that button for it too. And they can do that with their gloves on, with their spacesuits, or they can do it with their gloves off.

• 22:25Speaker 06

  Neil, I just, I want you to know that the interface for these touchscreens is written in JavaScript on top of Linux and Chromium.

• 22:33Nilay Patel?

  I saw, we, I saw a tweet from like a Google engineer saying that. I sent it to Sean and Lauren and Sean's like, we've known this for years.

• 22:43Nilay Patel?

  I was like, ah, I thought I had some news. I mean, that's incredible. Presumably, there's a more redundant. Yeah, no, the rest of it's like standard C++. It's just like the GUI is, yeah. And then the spacesuits were also designed by SpaceX. That was like a big reveal. There's an element to this where Elon made it look cool. Well, you can tell that he made it look cool. Is that just Elon? Or is that like a commercial crew? Like, will the Starliner look as cool when Boeing does it?

• 23:09Speaker 05

  I mean, I think the Starliner looks cool, but they're definitely very different aesthetics. And the Starliner looks more like your typical, like, old space vehicle. It's got its standard, you know, switches and buttons. And that's not to say SpaceX did have to put buttons in there. They, there were some things that they had to actually bring out of the interface. There's also a, if I recall correctly, there's a huge button that just says eject.

• 23:35Speaker 05

  And like, that is if the astronauts are feeling something that we're not seeing, they can just grab that and, and take the Crew Dragon off the Falcon 9. But yeah, I think if you've listened to Elon, you know, over the years when he talks about space, he's always very, he just places a lot of emphasis on the aesthetic. And I think that's very clear with his rockets, too. It's like, he, he wants people to think that space is cool. And so a lot of that goes into the design part of the process.

• 24:07Nilay Patel?

  So, right before this launch happened, there was a controversy at NASA where the head of human spaceflight left. Walk people through that because I think it's still just like an unresolved question with what is going on with this entire program? Is it doesn't have, there's nobody in charge of it right now.

• 24:24Speaker 05

  That was pretty wild. I did not see that coming at all. Um, yeah, so the Associate Administrator for Human Exploration, Human Space Exploration, he suddenly resigned a week before the launch. Everyone was freaking out. They were thinking, oh my God, he knows something about the Crew Dragon mission. Like, what is he not telling us? But I actually spoke with Doug, Doug Lovero is his name. And it's just something that he can't reveal. He said he took a risk at NASA. There's some rumors that it has to do with some contracts they gave out regarding the human lunar landers that they're building. Basically, he couldn't tell me what it was, but he said it was 100% nothing to do with

• 25:09Speaker 05

  the Crew Dragon mission. It had to do with some decision he made that must have violated some rules and then he had to resign over it.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  So, the reason I ask that question is, it seems like as NASA moves towards this more commercial model, more private companies involved in space, there are going to be many more opportunities for bad contracting processes or backdoor deals. Is NASA ready for that as an organization to be a customer like that?

• 25:40Speaker 05

  I don't know. I think we're gonna find out. You know, I think one other thing that I'm concerned about too, and a lot of people have been concerned about during this process is transparency. And I commend SpaceX. They've been very transparent for a lot of this process. But when you are a private company, you don't have to tell us everything, you know? And a lot of the times, like, we were getting information because we had to pry it out of them. And not just SpaceX, but Boeing too. Like, it was, sometimes, we were like, wait, why are we just hearing about this now? You know, like, we would hear about testing failures. Another thing, Boeing had a software glitch that we didn't

• 26:22Speaker 05

  know about. We knew there was one software glitch on their first uncrewed test flight. There was a second software glitch, and we didn't find out about it until some of us were listening in on a public meeting, like a safety panel meeting, and they disclosed it there. But they had known about it since the flight, and it took them months to tell us. So...

• 26:41Nilay Patel?

  You would think that Boeing would know better than to hide a software glitch.

• 26:46Speaker 05

  Well, I think they didn't want, they really did not want to talk about it.

• 26:50Nilay Patel?

  That cuts both ways. Like, also, you would think that Boeing definitely hides software glitches.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was my understanding of it. But yeah, so, I'm not pointing to anything particularly egregious. I just think that moving forward with NASA is doing these kinds of deals, and we have, there are astronauts, right? Like, we paid for them to go to space. With our astronauts on those vehicles, I do have concerns about private companies taking that over, just in terms of information. But I guess we'll, we'll see how the companies, you know, continue to talk to us moving forward.

• 27:29Nilay Patel?

  Can I tell you, I watched this on a, I watched the launch on a Zoom with my niece and nephew. And we like, my nephew called my mom and said, you should watch this. And then my mom called me afterwards and all she asked was, we pay the astronauts, right? And I was like, yeah, they're like NASA employees. Like it was just like not clear to her. She was like, they're not volunteers, are they? It's so dangerous.

• 27:50Nilay Patel?

  No, they're NASA employees.

• 27:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, they do well.

• 27:53Nilay Patel?

  I, I just think like spaceflight has been out of, like launching Americans to space from American soil has just been out of the public consciousness for nine years. And it's like amazing how much we have to relearn some of the basics.

• 28:06Speaker 05

  I mean, I know you know, because you're my boss, but like, how many people do you think in your sphere know that we've been launching from Kazakhstan this whole time?

• 28:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I, I think zero, zero people.

• 28:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 28:18Nilay Patel?

  We keep talking about Boeing, but they have the Starliner. What is the status of Starliner next to Crew Dragon? Is this kicking them in the butt or are they trying to go faster?

• 28:26Speaker 05

  So I mentioned it earlier, they're uncrewed. They have, so both of these companies did uncrewed test flights of their vehicles last year. SpaceX's went flawlessly and then Boeing's did not. So they, um, like I, like I mentioned, they had a software glitch. Once the Starliner was deployed from its rocket and it prevented its engines from burning at the right time. And so it didn't get into the right orbit it was supposed to in order to meet up with the space station, which is kind of a big deal because the entire point of these vehicles is to take astronauts to the space station. So they had to bring it home early. We found out about this other software glitch that they actually corrected in time. But if they hadn't, it could have been a problem when they came through the atmosphere.

• 29:11Speaker 05

  So there were a lot of problems associated with that launch. So Boeing was like, you know what, we're going to do it again. And they're aiming for this fall to do another uncrewed test flight of Starliner. And then once that is deemed successful, then they will do a crewed mission like the one that SpaceX just did.

• 29:29Nilay Patel?

  How much, like, the space community, how much best practices, sharing of information do companies like Boeing and SpaceX do? Like, when you talk about code and like Boeing has bad code and SpaceX is going flawlessly, if you map that to the tech companies we usually cover, like, Apple and Google don't talk a lot, right? Like, Samsung phones explode and Apple's like, "Told you so," and they don't help them. This seems like a different set of stakes, a different market that we're creating. Is there communication back and forth between all these companies and their agencies trying to make it all work better?

• 30:02Speaker 05

  Well, I know that SpaceX is pretty, they make things open source for a lot of their data. I don't know about communication between the companies themselves, but I do know that NASA definitely shares a lot of its information and testing because NASA has years and years of, you know, testing data that they can, you know, provide as like a gift to these companies. So I know that they definitely worked with NASA on a lot of those things and it almost gave them, no, not even almost, it gave them a leg up in the development process because if they had to start from scratch, they would have had to do a lot of that testing on their own to begin with. So I know that NASA has been a very vital resource in that department, for sure.

• 30:42Nilay Patel?

  And are there other companies beyond SpaceX and Boeing that might participate at this level, or is it going to be a market of two kind of big companies?

• 30:51Speaker 05

  It's going to be a market of two companies for now, but there is another company, Sierra Nevada Corporation, that also bid for the original contracts and commercial crew. They have this like really adorable little space plane, it looks like a mini space shuttle that's designed to fly on top of rockets, and they're developing actually to send it to the space station with cargo, but they say it can also be used to carry humans if just designed the right way. So that is also potentially coming, but for now SpaceX and Boeing are the ones for this long.

• 31:26Speaker 06

  Is Sierra Nevada Space Company related to Sierra Nevada Beer Company?

• 31:30Nilay Patel?

  That's really what I'm thinking here.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  It is not, but I get that a lot.

• 31:35Nilay Patel?

  It's just, you know, like Jeff Bezos was like, well, my internet bookstore is going great. I'm gonna start a rocket company.

• 31:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:41Nilay Patel?

  It's a path that people take.

• 31:43Speaker 06

  If you want to feel better about it, my first inclination was the, the, the computer games company, Sierra, from like the eighties. So that's where I live.

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  All right. I'd be remiss if we let you go without asking about Elon.

• 31:55Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 31:55Nilay Patel?

  What is the current status of Elon Musk?

• 31:58Speaker 05

  Last I checked, he said he was gonna take some time off Twitter and then he, that, I guess lasted a total, like less than 24 hours. So he's back and he is suggesting that Jeff Bezos break up Amazon because it is a monopoly because it would not publish a contrarian COVID-19 book.

• 32:18Nilay Patel?

  That makes sense. You want to break up the bookstore from AWS to punish the bookstore? That makes sense. Look, I'm sympathetic to it. I just, I think the bookstore would still just do whatever it does. Was he on his best behavior for the launch? Like, he was there in a suit, right? The president was there. They played Macho Man. That was very strange. Like, watch a man by the village people while the president was like watching the rocket. Was he just like on his best behavior?

• 32:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think he was, he composed himself very well. And I think the parts I enjoyed the most were when they, everyone realized the, the level of importance of this launch. And it really kind of hits home because these two men that they launched are dads. And we got, we got to see them interact with their children when they both left. Like, that was probably the most emotional part for me was them saying goodbye to their sons and their wives, who are both astronauts, I might add. And so Elon was very clear. He's like, it's important for us to bring these people home to their families. And I think him being a dad, you know, that resonated with him especially.

• 33:22Nilay Patel?

  It just, it strikes me as, there's the Elon character that we see on Twitter that runs Tesla, and then there's the SpaceX Elon character who seems like a very different person.

• 33:34Speaker 05

  I think I have the better end of the deal in the terms of.

• 33:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's like you and Sean and you're like devil and an angel.

• 33:42Speaker 05

  Well, here's why. It's because SpaceX is a private company and also SpaceX inspires a lot of awe, right? You know, and they they get their fair share of criticism, of course, but it has a lot of fans. And I think he geeks out a lot talking about space, you know, and so that that shines through when he's on his, when he has his SpaceX hat on.

• 34:04Nilay Patel?

  Is there an element to this? I think about this a lot. I actually asked Liz about this when she was on the last time. SpaceX COO Gwen Shotwell, like, runs SpaceX, basically. There is not that kind of character at Tesla, but she's very much sort of in the background. Do you see her taking a more public role, being a more public face as commercial crew ramps up?

• 34:25Speaker 05

  I don't think so. I think that's very much their dynamic, as Elon's the one out in the world and and he's kind of almost become the like PR leg a bit of the company, you know, like his tweets often are like, they'll make news about the things that SpaceX is working on, you know, that's a lot of the times when I'm reporting, I'm just going through his Twitter page and pulling out the stuff that he says because that is where we learn a lot of the new developments or like one of the stuff that they're working on. I think Gwen Gwen was definitely a part of a lot of the press coverage, for sure. She was doing press conferences before this, but I think her job is definitely

• 35:06Speaker 05

  being, you know, the rock of the company and being the leader that is doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes that we don't see.

• 35:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just a really interesting dynamic because that there's not a parallel to her at Tesla. And so Tesla just like SpaceX cannot be a chaotic company. Like, I don't, it just cannot be. Whereas Tesla is like free to be whatever it is.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  Well, it's like when you, when you have these government contracts, you know, it takes things to a whole new level, you know? And we also saw the consequences of when chaos is introduced into SpaceX, you know, with Elon smoking pot and NASA did a review of the company's safety culture, you know, that has major consequences because of the level of work that they do. Yeah, I just don't think there's time for chaos when it comes to SpaceX because of just what they're doing and who they're launching.

• 36:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right, I want to end with your op ed. You wrote an op ed about how this was supposed to be a shining moment of American unity, but it's obviously happening in the backdrop of the protests, of the incredible focus on police brutality in this country. Tell us, like, is that resonating? You said something to me that just really affected me, which is, the space community is in a bubble. Is that bubble starting to break down?

• 36:27Speaker 05

  I hope so. The sense that I get, and I think if you talk to a lot of reporters who report on space, is that the space world does not want to admit that there are problems. They want to just continue with their work, and they wanted to celebrate this launch as if nothing was going on. And, look, I understand. I am empathetic to that, because I cannot imagine the countless amount of hours that people spent on this launch. But, at the same time, if they really want people to be united, to watch a space launch, they have to acknowledge that there are major injustices happening on the earth below. And I think that silence and that, what's the word?

• 37:12Speaker 05

  They just tried to ram through it, you know, as if nothing was going on. They're not going to change their plans. They're not going to make any kind of adjustments. They're just going to say that this is, you know, this is going to be a hopeful launch and a thing of unity. But that's just not going to work, when space is a very, it's still very exclusive, it's still expensive, and also, I don't think a lot of people feel like it's for them, you know, unless you're rich, or white, or a man. And so, I just think that the space world really needs to take a deep look and say, okay, if we really want people to be involved and excited about what we're doing, we need to work here on the ground to fix these injustices and make sure that we are actively...

• 37:59Speaker 05

  Helping the world and making things more equal. And then people will feel like they're invited to these kinds of launches.

• 38:06Nilay Patel?

  Elon has said himself, like you were saying about design. He wants people to be inspired by the launches. He wants them to feel a sense of awe. I think to me, if you feel that sense of awe and then you have no opportunities to act on it, to build a career, to participate, it is actually, we've done something wrong. Like, we've made some mistake. If there are kids across the country who feel that sense of wonder, and then they are blocked from the opportunity to participate because of whatever structural problems we have, that is, that's just an obvious mistake, I think, for the space community to say, this is the pipeline we need.

• 38:43Speaker 05

  100%. And if the space community should want as many bright and amazing people to come and work for them as possible. And that means committing to fixing these structural problems here on Earth. And I, I, I've been seeing some commitments to that eke out from the space community over time. It's still just feels like they just want to keep on doing their work and not really address that. So I hope that changes. But I think we should point to something that was really powerful when I saw it. Lauren Lyons is a SpaceX engineer who does these launch live streams. And she is black and she was prominently featured on the live stream during the NASA mission.

• 39:26Speaker 05

  And it caught the attention of a young black girl whose mom tweeted out, you know, how can we find this girl? Because now my daughter feels like she can become a rocket scientist. And I think that's just so compelling. That's, that's what we need and that kind of, that kind of stuff and more is what the space world should be focused on.

• 39:44Nilay Patel?

  One thing you noted in your piece was, right now, corporate America is going through a frenzy of brand statements about the protests, saying they support Black Lives Matter. We have not really seen that same sort of... Vocalization from major space companies, has that started to change?

• 40:02Speaker 05

  Like I said, it's slowly eking out. A company, Virgin Orbit, put a really great statement pretty early on. Also, Blue Origin put out a statement I saw yesterday. So I'm sure there's more, and these companies are probably going to be mad that I did not point them out. But I am seeing it, and I hope that it just is a snowball effect and that it keeps going and that this, and then it doesn't stop. I want it to be more than just statements. Like, we need to see action behind it. And there's some programs and organizations that are really working hard to change things, and I hope it just spurs even more organizations and programs that are looking to fix racial injustice and to bring more people of color

• 40:46Speaker 05

  into the space industry.

• 40:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I hope so, too. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for joining us. It's your day off. I told you 20 minutes, it's been 40.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  I never have a day off.

• 40:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna make you take one, it's gonna happen. But thank you so much, we'll have you back soon.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Welcome to Sephora. I'm looking for a perfume that's not too perfumey. I got you.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Serum moisturizer, or moisturizer serum.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Let's get into layering. My concealer is making me look worse. Sounds like the wrong shade. Let's get you matched.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  There's only one store that really gets what you're going for. Get beauty from people who get beauty, only at Sephora.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Hi, I, uh...

• 42:02Speaker 07

  Let's get you a basket.

• 42:07Nilay Patel?

  Casey Newton, welcome back to the Vergecast.

• 42:09Speaker 08

  Thanks for having me.

• 42:10Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna have you on for good news one of these days. It's gonna happen. It's gonna be great.

• 42:15Speaker 08

  Wait, have you, have you heard something?

• 42:19Nilay Patel?

  I, I just know it in my heart, but sadly, it is not today. So you were on last week, we were talking about Trump's executive order, something to do with Section 230, a bit of a legal mess. We unpacked 230, we unpacked the order. As we were having that conversation and the executive order was spurred by Trump tweeting Twitter, putting a label on that tweet. It was about mail-in ballots. Since that time, the protests in this country about racial injustice have exploded to all 50 states. There is a lot of controversy about them. Trump is not doing, I would say, any kind of reasonable job responding to them. He, more tweets have been moderated by Twitter, particularly on glorifying violence.

• 43:03Nilay Patel?

  Twitter has taken action against another member of Congress for tweets glorifying violence. There has been unrest at Facebook from employees about not moderating Facebook posts from Trump. Zuckerberg had it all hands. The context of our conversation around that executive order moderating content has just dramatically changed. And the tenor inside of Facebook seems to have dramatically changed. Just walk us through that a little bit.

• 43:29Speaker 08

  Yeah, so you can sort of think of it as a two-step process. The first step was that there were posts about mail-in voting that Twitter believed sort of crossed a line related weirdly to some policies they put in place to deal with COVID-19 misinformation. Although the intersection of COVID-19 and voting is actually super important and something to keep an eye on. But Facebook made the decision, you know what? This, it doesn't violate any of our policies. You might not like it, but we don't think it violates a policy. And then the second step was Trump did a bunch of posts that some people took to be either glorifying or inciting violence against protesters over the weekend.

• 44:10Speaker 08

  There was one about, you know, protesters will be met with the most vicious dogs and ominous weapons I've ever seen, right?

• 44:18Nilay Patel?

  He really does talk like Palpatine. I just want to.

• 44:22Speaker 08

  When Twitter saw those tweets, they decided to put them behind a warning label and say that they glorified violence. And that is what really put Facebook under pressure because Trump crossposted the exact same words to Facebook. And so now Facebook was in a position of applying less enforcement to the president's posts than Twitter had. And for employees inside Facebook who thought that those words did violate Facebook's community standards, it became the sort of breaking point, which then led to a virtual walkout.

• 44:56Speaker 06

  So tell us how that walkout played out.

• 44:59Speaker 08

  Well, as employees began to debate this among themselves, a group was formed. About 400 people joined it and they discussed ways that they could protest. And one of the things that was suggested was a virtual walkout. And so on Monday, employees changed their status to say that they were out of the office. They stopped doing work. Maybe they attended an in-real-life protest or they did some sort of other organizing. And some of them tweeted about it publicly. And this was a really big deal because normally Facebook has a lot of internal debate, but it very rarely spills over so that folks like us can take a look at it. But in this case, you had about a dozen employees who said that they disagreed with Zuckerberg's

• 45:41Speaker 08

  decision and sort of called on the company to handle it differently. So for people like me who've been writing about Facebook for a long time, it was really striking to see so many people come out and be openly critical.

• 45:54Speaker 06

  Real briefly, well, one, real briefly, my wife works for Oculus, which is a division of Facebook that is now disclosed. Can we just very quickly talk about what Zuckerberg's justification was and like why he didn't think these posts like broke Facebook's policies?

• 46:10Speaker 08

  Yes. So it's a couple of things. One is Facebook has a rule that if a state threatens violence, it generally will leave that post up. And the assumption has been that a state will be threatening violence against another state, right? Maybe you live in Israel and it's threatening to, I'm sorry, maybe you live in Palestine and Israel is threatening to bomb it. And the assumption has been that, well, if you live in Palestine, you have a right to know that. They did not take into account that a leader would threaten the use of force against their own citizens. And so they felt like there was nothing in the policy that actually let them remove those posts. So they felt like they had to leave it up.

• 46:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I mean, that specific issue is, I think, why this feels, I mean, especially egregious on top of everything else. It's like, the very thing that people are protesting against is violence from the state, and that is the reason that Mark Zuckerberg is citing for leaving the posts up.

• 47:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there are just a lot of contradictions here. You know, over the weekend, our executive editor, TC Sodik, wrote a piece about just the enormous amount of incidents of police brutality at the protests that were captured on camera and uploaded by citizens to social media. That content is, Section 230 is the mechanism by which Twitter and Facebook don't have to sit around, like, moderating all that content. And so if you think that the smartphone camera has caused social change, which I think it just very clearly has, there are many other consequences of it, but if you think that this window into police brutality is a function of social networks, technology, cameras, all this stuff, well, all of that is enabled by

• 47:55Nilay Patel?

  the fact that the social networks are not required to moderate in this way. And at the same time, Zuckerberg's saying, we're not going to moderate this other thing, and then to be faced with calls to moderate harder, there is just an inherent messy contradiction in there.

• 48:09Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not somebody who thinks that this was a really easy call. I did think that the president's tweets were incitements to violence, but I also want these companies to make decisions that are rooted in principle and can be repeated and are not just the whims of their founders, right? Because when we have these unelected, unaccountable CEOs making moderation decisions that are not rooted in some sort of principle, then I think a lot of bad things do happen. But what I think is really notable is that once Snap weighed in later in the week, you had two of the biggest alternative social networks taking one position and Facebook taking another.

• 48:47Nilay Patel?

  So that is really interesting to me. In the backdrop of all of this is this Trump executive order calling on the FCC to somehow reinterpret Section 230. If you, you know, if you ask the Democratic commissioners in the FCC, they say this will turn us into the speech police. And then Commissioner Rosenworcel has been public saying that. You have the Republican Commissioners in the FCC like seemingly eager to take on that role. So there's this like churning backdrop of somehow regulating moderation on the internet. And you have Facebook and to a large extent, Google with YouTube not doing a lot. And then you have the smaller ones becoming more aggressive, feeling emboldened. Does that dynamic is not what I expected. Does it make sense to you?

• 49:32Speaker 08

  I mean, a little bit, right? Like, let's say like you, me and Dieter had a web forum and like we invited a few people in and one of them started saying like, man, I hope those protesters all get shot this weekend. We just like kick them out and it wouldn't be related to principle. We would just think people have a right to peacefully protest. We don't want you in our forum, right? And because we're small, we don't really owe anything to anybody, right? We just kind of got to set the rules. Whereas if you're running a platform that almost 2 billion people a day are using, the calculus changes. All of a sudden, you're taking into account all sorts of different equities that are going to pressure you to actually make the fewest moderation decisions possible and

• 50:14Speaker 08

  just try to let people kind of, you know, come to their own agreements or disagreements on your service. So, you know, once again, the reason this feels so high stakes and so consequential is because we have this one network that is just so much bigger than all the other ones.

• 50:29Nilay Patel?

  The listeners can go read this too. There are transcripts of Zuckerberg's all hands, internal all hands at Facebook. I think Recode has one. There are some other ones out there. I was struck by how much he is talking about himself as the decision maker.

• 50:43Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  He went and talked to other people. He went and did the research. He says, I know this will have practical consequences on us. He really made it about himself in a very direct way. At the same time, he's trying to set up like a Supreme Court of Moderation Decisions. That it doesn't exist yet. There are some practical and technical reasons it's not up to speed yet. But even right now, he hasn't divested that moderation authority. He made the decision.

• 51:12Speaker 08

  Yeah, and I mean, I think, you know, one reason why so much of that meeting was about him was because the employees are trying to hold him accountable for the decision that he made, right? Like, the pressure that he's getting is, hey, you decided this, why? And so the meeting is like, all right, well, here's what happened, right? And he sort of walks through it. But, you know, for a long time now, critics have been saying, it probably doesn't make sense to have one person ultimately responsible for all of the world's speech in determining what goes up and what comes down. And that's why they have started to set up this oversight board, which is, you know, getting on its feet, but is not fully baked yet.

• 51:46Nilay Patel?

  Doesn't it make sense? I know Facebook is much bigger than Twitter, but shouldn't it be that Twitter has one set of moderation decisions, and Facebook has another, and YouTube has another? Or should they coalesce into one sort of broad standard for the internet?

• 52:02Speaker 08

  Well, I mean, you know, around here, we love competition, right?

• 52:06Nilay Patel?

  We do. I mean, I'm baiting you into the question.

• 52:10Speaker 08

  And I do think that it has been a boon to all of the social networks that other ones exist. We've seen over and over again in the past few years, how like Pinterest will make a progressive decision, and then it will get copied in its own way on YouTube or Facebook, right? The existence of these other sites, they wind up becoming these little laboratories of good ideas. And the best ones, I think, do kind of get adopted as these industry-wide standards. So, yeah, the more the merrier, as far as I'm concerned.

• 52:41Nilay Patel?

  And Zuckerberg, in his meeting, he laid out some things he was gonna do and some takeaways. What are they? And what do you think of them?

• 52:50Speaker 08

  You know, they're gonna go back and look at some policies, right? Like, it sounds like he's open to the idea that if a world leader threatens violence against their own citizens, they may, they may come up with a new label, a new warning for that, right? Probably wouldn't take it down, but might put a warning. So they're gonna look at that. They're going to ask employees to come up with ways that Facebook could fight for racial justice. So they're kind of like soliciting input.

• 53:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I'm sorry, that is the most PTA shit I've ever heard my entire life.

• 53:20Speaker 08

  You asked me to say what they're doing, so this is what they're doing. There were seven things total, you know, but I mean, I think something that we should say is the real problem that I think a lot of employees and a lot of Facebook users want Mark Zuckerberg to solve is that Donald Trump is president, right?

• 53:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:39Speaker 08

  That's not a problem that Zuckerberg can solve. And he's trying to put himself in a position where he can make decisions that he can stand behind and believe in even when there is a non-insane person running the country, right? And he doesn't want to ratchet speech so far down because of this one actor. He even says during that that call, which we got ahold of the audio of, that over time, all they do is implement policies which generally just reduce speech. And he's getting very nervous about it because it feels like a one-way ratchet down. And so he's trying to figure out where can he stand firm to permit speech so that Facebook is still a vibrant source of discussion, if you see it as one, when Trump is gone.

• 54:23Nilay Patel?

  Well, this, I think, leads to, you wrote about this in your newsletter, this framing from Azaraskin. I actually went to college with Azaraskin.

• 54:33Speaker 08

  Really?

• 54:33Nilay Patel?

  I did.

• 54:34Speaker 08

  Wow. Free speech legend.

• 54:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and so he's got this framing, freedom of speech versus freedom of reach. And the thing that gets me every time is, yep, okay, you're going to moderate, but Facebook, the most shared content on Facebook is from Fox News and conservative sites. The YouTube recommendation algorithm, famous for radicalizing people in this way, like, there's an element of, we will permit you to post, but we will not amplify you. Snapchat obviously took that. We should talk about what Snap did here. But it doesn't seem like maybe Zuckerberg understands the distinction there, or he does, he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to make it as clearly as some other folks do.

• 55:15Speaker 08

  I think Facebook has been a little slower to consider those freedom of reach questions than some others have. Their recommendation algorithms, who gets suggested to whom, they've been pretty behind on that stuff. So when Snap comes along and says, "Hey, Trump can keep his account, he can post all the snaps he wants, but if you go to the part of the app where we promote interesting accounts," which is Discover, he's just not going to be there. And so, he can still be found, you can still find him in search results, but if he's going to get any views, it's going to be because he earned them and not because we handed them to him. Now, it's easier for Snap because Snap is mostly a messaging app, right? It doesn't have a central feed. If it did, all these questions

• 55:58Speaker 08

  would be 100 times harder. But it at least raises the question for Facebook, where are the surfaces in the app where you are just helping Donald Trump build an audience and spread these messages, which do include stuff that walks right up to the line and probably tips over of wishing violence on peaceful protesters? Where are the places within the app that you could pull back on that and restrict that if you wanted, so that he could still say whatever he wanted, but you would not be the handmaidens in helping him to build a larger megaphone?

• 56:29Nilay Patel?

  And that goes to the idea that the only moderation decision that exists is leave it up or take it down. There's a massive spectrum in between, and it feels like Facebook hasn't really thought about the fact that, okay, maybe we just don't show this content in the feed as much as the other stuff we want to show. Maybe we put labels on it. Like, all this other stuff you can do, they haven't, there's no transparency around that.

• 56:53Speaker 06

  And he was weirdly critical of Jack Dorsey's decision to put a warning label up instead of just taking it down, too, right?

• 56:59Speaker 08

  He did criticize it. His point was, if you think a post is going to get someone killed, take it down. Like, why would you leave it up at all if you thought it was going to get people killed?

• 57:07Speaker 06

  That's not weird. That's, like, completely reasonable.

• 57:10Speaker 08

  Yeah, you know, as to like labels, Facebook was early to labels, right? I mean, I think they were probably the first of the social networks to put up like fact checking labels once they finally started a fact check post, which wasn't after, it wasn't until after the 2016 election. So they put up the labels. They also use this really confusing terminology. They would say, well, we reduced the reach of this post, right? Like it, it's permitted on the site, but we're going to reduce its reach. And then of course you're thinking, well, okay, but from what to what, right? It's like, uh, yeah, you know, we decided it was so bad, it was only going to get 463 views, you know? It's like, okay, but who did you show it to and why? Right? Like, at a certain level, all of these questions can just sort of break down into insanity.

• 57:54Speaker 08

  But, but I wanted to make that point because they have certainly addressed the freedom of reach questions in a bunch of ways before. But as you noted, Eli, all along the way, it does seem like it is those big far right megaphones that have grown the largest. And one of the questions that you can debate with Facebook executives all day, if you want to, is, is that is because Facebook and other social networks and the internet that we have now just radicalized a generation into becoming fascist? Or were there just a lot of latent fascists in the country? And as soon as they got a hold of their own printing presses, they just kind of came out to play and started talking to each other?

• 58:31Nilay Patel?

  What did you make of that Wall Street Journal report that Facebook was told by its internal researchers that it was radicalizing people and decided to ignore it?

• 58:39Speaker 08

  Um, well, I can tell you that Facebook hated that story. That was communicated to me in very strong terms. Very strong terms was that communicated to me. I wrote about this in my newsletter and I think a couple of things need to be said. One is polarization is a tricky word. It's kind of an umbrella term that can mean a lot of different things in this context. And it's worth asking yourself, if you ran Facebook and you decided that your number one aim was to reduce polarization, what does that mean? Does that mean we should have one party rule in this country? Does it mean that we should all agree with each other on every political issue? Right? It's a really weird kind of metric to organize around. Now, at the same time, if an effective

• 59:19Speaker 08

  Of using social networks is that all of the liberals are now way more liberal and all of the conservatives are way more conservative. Well, that does seem like a problem and something that we may want to look into. And so they built these teams that tried to devise ways to stop that exact kind of thing from happening. And what Facebook would say is we implemented the ideas that we thought were best and we threw out the ones that we thought, you know, would be counterproductive or would have other negative effects. I think actually both the Journal and Facebook are right. I think the Journal was right in the sense that, well, let me start. I'll reverse it. Facebook was right in the sense that they have implemented measures to try to reduce polarization in certain ways. Like, that's true. You can look them up on the internet. They exist. They're in the product today.

• 1:00:00Speaker 08

  But the Journal's larger point was that polarization really isn't that important to Facebook. They did not make it a priority. And that I think is true. And executives have more or less told me that because there's a study that came out. Ezra Klein wrote a really good piece about it in Vox earlier this year. And it said, if you look at what they call affective polarization, which is basically, hey, your daughter's going to marry a Republican. How do you feel about that? Right? And they looked at kind of how these sentiments tracked in different countries before and after Facebook came out. And what you see is that as internet usage goes up in these countries, in some countries polarization goes up, in some it goes down, in some it stays the same. It doesn't seem like social networks are having this uniform effect all around the world. And it seemed like if Facebook, which is the same product in all these countries,

• 1:00:44Speaker 08

  had these unique properties that were driving us all mad and causing us to, you know, hate one another, then you would see a uniform effect and you don't. And it is really on the basis of that study that I think Facebook's leadership team decided this just can't be that big a priority for us because it's not empirically clear to us that we are uniquely polarizing the world.

• 1:01:03Nilay Patel?

  Obviously, there are other factors in every other, like, there are not, there's not Fox News in every country that Facebook is in. There's not a president who, for his many, many moral faults, our president is very good at being an internet troll and like making policy through internet trolling. It is maybe his only skill.

• 1:01:28Nilay Patel?

  That seems like the problem here, and you already brought it up. Like, the problem for these social networks is they are built to amplify some kinds of leaders, amplify some kinds of companies, let Instagram crafters all find each other. They are not built to mitigate a president who seems outside of all norms and boundaries of the American political system. Is that just Zuckerberg has to realize, like, he's not normal and I gotta do something special? Or is it he's just trying to walk the line until there's an election and then he might have to deal with it then?

• 1:02:00Speaker 08

  So this is a really good question, right? One of the reasons why Facebook employees were so upset over the weekend was this sense that there is nothing that Trump could do that would be enough of a red line that Facebook would actually remove one of his posts or take some other action that you know would make him mad, right? And, you know, what I heard back after that was, well, if you go back to last month, the president's campaign team had tweeted this ad that looked like the official US census, when in reality it was just like a garbage campaign survey. And it misrepresented itself, and Facebook removed it. They said, this is not, you can't make it look like people are taking the census when

• 1:02:42Speaker 08

  you're just trying to, like, collect their email address so you can get them to donate to you, right? And it didn't make a lot of waves at the time, even though, you know, it was, you know, Facebook saying, you're not allowed to run this kind of political ad. And it's particularly interesting, given all the crap they took for saying last year that they were not going to fact-check political ads, right? Here's a case where they actually sort of did, if you squint, right? So Facebook's point to me was, look, he already crossed the red line, and we got rid of the post. So why do people think that there's no line that he can't cross that we won't make a decision on? You know, here, like, I feel like all my predictions are always wrong, but like, here's something that I'm predicting.

• 1:03:24Speaker 08

  I predict, like, in the next month or so, Trump will say something on one or more social networks that is so horrible that it makes all of this discussion look quaint, right? Like, this conversation will just be a time capsule of, oh, remember when the worst thing that Trump would say was when the shooting starts, the looting starts, or when the looting starts, the shooting starts, right? Like-

• 1:03:44Nilay Patel?

  Casey, Casey, I'm sorry. You say you're gonna go out on a limb and make a prediction, and your prediction is Trump's going to do something awful on social media?

• 1:03:53Speaker 08

  That is specifically like far worse than what he said before in a way that clearly violates everyone's guidelines. And I think there's a really good chance that like by July or August, Trump will have said something that Facebook removed. Like if I were a betting man, I would make that bet. And yeah, so that's, that's the bet that I would make.

• 1:04:13Nilay Patel?

  It's interesting. I said this to you earlier, but it's interesting that the census is the line. Like, you can do a lot of things, but you cannot remove Mark Zuckerberg's ability to get data about the United States population. Like, D C will not let that happen.

• 1:04:28Speaker 08

  Wait, when you look at the things they draw really hard lines around, it just tends to be stuff that's easy to figure out where there's not a lot of black and white, right? And like, you know, that's why they will say on one hand, we're not arbiters of truth. But on the other hand, if you say, America votes in December, they'll just take that down instantly. And they won't even send it out to be a fact checking. But the reason is because like, well, despite how polarized we are in this country, we still agree on the calendar dates, right? That's like something that polarization hasn't taken from us yet. And so it's just like easy to build a policy around. And like, are you faking a census? Is like easy to design a policy around. But, you know, getting back to what kicked off this whole discussion is, what can a sitting president say about protests in his country? And what he might do to stop them or manage them? That's like, there's, there's not an

• 1:05:12Speaker 08

  up or down, left or right answer there, right? It like, that is just shades of nuance. And that is hell world for their policy teams.

• 1:05:19Nilay Patel?

  T C wrote a piece this week. It was on my mind to that these networks should just ban, ban these actors. Like, they're obviously bad actors in the system. They're outside of our political norms. They're calling for unacceptable levels of violence, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. My argument is, the conservative movement in this country, for decades now, has thrived on saying the media is against them. It has thrived, like, Fox News is the most popular cable channel in the country. You just watch it. I have family who watches it. I hear about it. The foundational value of Fox News is the mainstream media's line to you. But they're the most popular source of news in the country. If they're

• 1:06:01Nilay Patel?

  just, if Facebook is just going to be accused of being biased against conservatives, if Twitter is just going to be accused of censoring conservatives, why not take the step and say, actually, there are some lines?

• 1:06:12Speaker 08

  Because Facebook does not just want to be a social network for Democrats. Like, Facebook wants to be a service that all people use to keep in touch with their friends and family and talk about the issues that are important to them. And if its policy framework is, we're just gonna sort of make a moral calculus about how much we like all of the elected officials in the world, and then keep up the ones we like and get rid of the ones that we hate, then they'll just break the service. Like, it stops working.

• 1:06:40Speaker 06

  The other thing that's weird here, not weird, the other thing that's like maybe hard to suss out is it seems to me like Facebook really wants to have a universal set of rules for every country. So, you could make the argument that like, they don't want to, they don't want to do what you're suggesting, Neelai, because the, the news dynamic in the US is very different than the news dynamic in another country where Facebook operates, and they want to operate, you know, 2.5 billion people, you know, America accounts for, you know, some small percentage of that. And so, the question then becomes, like, is that actually feasible to have a universal set of rules for a network that big?

• 1:07:17Speaker 08

  Well, I mean, again, like, a lot of my criticisms of Facebook really come down to size, right? It has so many problems of size, and it loves to talk about the benefits of size. But here, everything we're talking about, here's a huge drawback. We're trying to create one context for all of human speech. It seems pretty obvious, when you say it like that, why it's not working, right? Like, the entire history of humanity is organizing into tribes with shared norms and values. And now, we're trying to march all of humanity into one online space and telling them to abide by one set of norms and values. And that is an extremely weird thing to ask of humanity, and yet, that is what Facebook is asking of us.

• 1:07:56Speaker 06

  You know, the, all of this framework has gone deregulated out of existence, but there was a time when the FCC had local broadcast ownership rules, and it would limit the amount of radio stations any one person or company could own. It would make sure that a TV station, the broadcast TV stations, were owned by some local nexus of people. All that is deregulated, but the, the foundation of that was, hey, we should not have media consolidation in this country. Hey, you should be...

• 1:08:26Nilay Patel?

  Somehow connected to the community that you're serving as a broadcaster. The reason they were able to do that is because the radio waves are a public resource. So they were able, they had some sort of like policy mandate to manage them. You cannot do that with a Facebook, but that set of principles does not seem to have carried over even as a norm or a philosophical framework for how Facebook should manage itself. And I, I've now baited you right back into the competition question, which is if you broke up Facebook and said it needs to be smaller so that it can be managed, does actually breaking WhatsApp and Instagram off of Facebook accomplish any of that? Or is that just, we feel better because we, we took a hammer to a thing that we think is bad?

• 1:09:11Speaker 08

  Uh, I think it's a fair question. I think that if you spun off Instagram, we would still be asking whether Trump's posts could be on Facebook, right? At the same time, I would say that even if you don't take it to this place of break them up, you can look at how other social networks have managed this problem. So again, benefits of competition. Look at what Reddit does. Reddit doesn't say, really, we're going to have one context for all of speech. Now, they do have a floor of rules, right? Like you can't post illegal content on Reddit. There, you know, there's a handful of things that you just can't do on any subreddit. But any subreddit can raise the ceiling of those rules.

• 1:09:55Speaker 08

  So maybe you're, you run a subreddit for children and you decide you don't want there to be any cursing or profanity. You can set those rules. You can build those norms, right? You can have your tribe and you can have moderators that sort of make sure that those rules are followed. And that way, like-minded people can congregate and, and have exchanges and not have to abide by the code created essentially, I shouldn't say created by, but enforced by one person who none of us elected and is accountable to almost no one, right? So I think that that kind of local control could be reborn in these networks if they revisited those policies.

• 1:10:35Nilay Patel?

  Do you think that is something that Zuckerberg is considering as he builds this sort of global speech council?

• 1:10:42Speaker 08

  I don't know if he's considering that specific thing. I think that the Oversight Board is about something different. One, it's about creating some legitimacy and some sense of justice in their decision making, because now there is a formal mechanism for appeal, and it's no longer Zuckerberg making the call, right? Think about how excited Mark is going to be a year from now, where there's some really tough call that he doesn't have to make, because it can just be referred to the Oversight Board, and they will abide by that decision. And some people will hate it, and some people will love it. And Mark will get to throw up his hands and say, "Well, we built this institution because we believe that experts with backgrounds in speech law and, you know, human rights should be making these decisions and not me."

• 1:11:26Speaker 08

  And I actually think it's really hard to argue that you're better off having Mark make those decisions than the Oversight Board.

• 1:11:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that unelected group of global elites. I'm sure that's going to go great with the Fox News crowd. What happens next here? I know you said you hate predictions, and we don't really know. But we are operating in sort of a minute-to-minute moment. The employee unrest is very high. The last time there was employee unrest, or it felt like Facebook couldn't recruit, we saw them sort of take action on privacy. Yeah. What happens next in the turn of the wheel for Facebook?

• 1:12:01Speaker 08

  So I will say that this particular employee revolt, just within the past 24 hours, does not seem to me to be the sort of thing that is snowballing. Now, I still have some reporting to do on this sort of over the weekend. But it doesn't seem like the sort of thing where thousands and thousands of people are now lining up against this decision. And while I don't want to take anything away from the 400 or so people who participated, it's worth noting that the Google walkout that we all paid attention to a couple of years ago, I think it was about 18,000 people, right? So it was really, really much bigger. I think there are some questions about what do those 400 people do? How many of them will quit? Some have quit already.

• 1:12:43Speaker 08

  I know that others are asking around, seeing what jobs are out there. That kind of stuff has a delayed fuse, right? It can take a month or two to line up a new job, particularly during a global depression. Some employees might be likelier to stay because we're in a global depression. So all of those are kind of unknowns, but I think the sort of secondary question is, how much longer do we have before Trump does something really, really inflammatory and posts about it on his social network? That's a thing no one can predict, but I assume that once it does, we will be having all of these same conversations all over again.

• 1:13:12Nilay Patel?

  All right. Well, it's a good thing you write a newsletter about Facebook and democracy.

• 1:13:16Speaker 08

  And would you believe that it's absolutely free, Nayli? We just give it away to people.

• 1:13:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we gotta figure something out.

• 1:13:22Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Nilay Patel?

  Do you accept Bitcoin?

• 1:13:24Speaker 08

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:13:26Nilay Patel?

  Wow, that was so enthusiastic.

• 1:13:30Nilay Patel?

  Where can they find the interface, Casey?

• 1:13:31Speaker 08

  You can find it at theverge.cominterface.

• 1:13:34Nilay Patel?

  All right, my friend. Well, I'm sure we're just gonna have you on the show over and over again, over until something, until the end, the heat death of the universe at this point.

• 1:13:42Speaker 08

  Well, this is the only human contact I have anymore, so I love it.

• 1:13:47Nilay Patel?

  Thanks, Casey. We'll talk to you soon.

• 1:13:48Speaker 08

  All right.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  Welcome to Sephora.

• 1:14:24Speaker 09

  I'm looking for a perfume that's not too perfumey.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  I got you.

• 1:14:29Speaker 03

  Serum moisturizer or moisturizer syrup?

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  Let's get into layering. My concealer is making me look worse? Sounds like the wrong shade. Let's get you matched.

• 1:14:41Speaker 04

  There's only one store that really gets what you're going for. Get beauty from people who get beauty, only at Sephora.

• 1:14:48Speaker 07

  Hi, I, uh...

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  Let's get you a basket.

• 1:14:54Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. We have to stop going long, Dieter. Have you noticed that we every week now, we just like, we hit an hour and a half?

• 1:15:00Speaker 06

  You know what I think the answer is, Neelai? I think the answer is to stop saying we've gone long and just accept it in our hearts.

• 1:15:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Verge Has Quarantine Edition is always 90 minutes long now. That is our policy. I ran it by Zuckerberg. Look, there is all the other stuff happening in the world. It is important. It is arguably more important than gadget news. It is more important than gadget news. However, our listeners consistently tell me and Dieter they enjoy the escape. So I want to make sure we talk about some technology news, some gadget news. It's still happening. The industry is still moving. Please know, like, we take this stuff to you. You can look at the site. Dieter and I are in charge of this website. Look at the site. That's where our priorities are in terms of coverage. But this stuff is still happening, and I take it very seriously. And Dieter, I know you get a lot of notes about this, too. People need a break, and this stuff is the break.

• 1:15:51Nilay Patel?

  So that's the balance we're trying to strike. Let us know if we're getting it wrong, but it's on our minds every single day.

• 1:15:58Speaker 06

  So to give you a break from having to think about politics and what the Trump administration has done, we'd like to talk about a phone that is fundamentally broken because of Trump administration policies.

• 1:16:13Speaker 06

  Sam Byford reviewed the Huawei P40 Pro, and there's like three things that I think are interesting about it. Number one, the like, the most relevant thing is unless you live in China, your app experience on this phone is going to be just fundamentally flawed because it doesn't have Google Play services, because Google's not allowed to provide software to Huawei because Huawei's in China, and there's this whole thing going on with that. And so if you're in China, great. Like, you've got the entire ecosystem of content and services and apps and whatnot. But you can't get it in the US full stop. And in Europe, you can, but you don't want to because like, the app, even if you didn't care about Google's apps, the apps that are available for it are really not good outside of the Google Play ecosystem.

• 1:16:56Speaker 06

  However, in an alternate universe where that wasn't true, I think the P40 Pro would be

• 1:17:03Speaker 06

  Like an incredibly fascinating head to head comparison with the Galaxy S20 Ultra, because I think that it did the camera stuff in a better way than the S20 Ultra in just insofar as like they didn't screw up the focusing.

• 1:17:20Speaker 06

  They threw a really, really huge sensor. I think it's like 1.12, 1 to over 128 or something. It's a gigantic sensor and it does focusing pretty well. It has an incredible performance in terms of low light photography. So like when you look at the phone world, you've got Samsung throwing hardware at the camera problem and not so good at software. You've got Google throwing software at the camera problem and pretty bad at hardware. And I guess you put Apple kind of in the middle there. And Huawei is definitely Samsung-ing the camera better than Samsung. They are doing a better job of just solving the problem with hardware than Samsung is right now. And I find that fascinating. And then the third thing is Huawei hasn't got the memo that everybody hates curved displays and like that moment is done.

• 1:18:05Speaker 06

  Not only did they curve the left and the right, they curved the top and the bottom. It's just like, stop it. Stop it right now.

• 1:18:11Nilay Patel?

  Why? It wouldn't be bad if anybody had ever figured out really what to do with those curved edges, right? Samsung had the weird swipey thing, but like you don't want your content spilling over there.

• 1:18:21Speaker 06

  Well, the, the thing that you do with those curved edges is you just like, it's just a shortcut to getting rid of bezels, right? And like minimizing or eliminating the view of bezels. But like the screen should just be inoperable. It should just be like, it just light up there. Just like make it look pretty, have it light up, but don't, don't have the pixels, the touchscreen part of that actually do anything and you're done.

• 1:18:43Nilay Patel?

  I don't think that's the right solution. Like you're watching a video and there's just like shining pixels at you or they just go black.

• 1:18:50Speaker 06

  Like it'll, it can display content, but just don't have it curved so much that you lose it. Like have it be basically flat. Just use it as a bezel reduction technology. That's all it should be.

• 1:18:59Nilay Patel?

  I feel, I just, when did bezels get so bad? It's fine. Have a little bezel and make the thing rational. Like no one's going to be mad at you. No one, no one is buying a phone because of the bezel size, as we have seen from the iPhone year after year. Where they're like, check out this giant four head bezel and it's fine. Anyhow, iPhone SE2 still has a huge bezel.

• 1:19:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, it really does.

• 1:19:22Nilay Patel?

  We're not like Khan's bezel.

• 1:19:25Speaker 06

  I was. I'm a con bezel on that thing. Anyway.

• 1:19:28Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's why Huawei keeps doing this. It's your fault.

• 1:19:31Speaker 06

  Well, I'm sorry. All right. Well, Marques Brownlee has actually been like, leading the charge against curved screens. He's been really, really strong at about it. And so I want to take credit for complaining about this stuff. Um, you know, can you tell me what's going on with HBO Max and data caps?

• 1:19:46Nilay Patel?

  That's my victory. I'm very excited about this. All right. Well, I mean, but I'm also sad. It's a sad excitement, I would say. Um, I would, it's bittersweet, but like more energy, like a high energy, bittersweet.

• 1:19:57Speaker 06

  Like the take a monster energy and put it in a Werther's.

• 1:20:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Caffeinated, bittersweet. Um, so I'll just give some backstory here. There was a concept called net neutrality. No, I'll go back that far.

• 1:20:10Speaker 06

  Oh, my God.

• 1:20:10Nilay Patel?

  So Julia and I interviewed Tony Gansalves on Tuesday. He is the CEO of a division of AT&T called Otter Media, which is responsible for the operation of HBO Max.

• 1:20:22Speaker 06

  Got it.

• 1:20:22Nilay Patel?

  HBO Max, the streaming service. It's very confusing. Literally, my first question to him was, you should change your title to CEO of HBO Max. I don't think most CEOs get that question. He was like, no, I'm not. Anyway, so the guy in charge of HBO Max, Tony Gansalves, comes on the Vergecast. It's a great interview. Julia did a great job with it. And I, of course, ask him the data cap question, which I have been talking about on the show for years and years and years. Net neutrality is gone. AT&T buys a content service. Obvious thing for it to do is give priority access to its own content on its network. And I, I, I'm not making it like a moral judgment here. It is just a rational business decision. If you own the pipe, you want your content to go through it better than your competitor content, right? Like,

• 1:21:07Nilay Patel?

  It's why you would do it. It's why you would buy, it's why AT&T would buy Time Warner. So I ask him and he says, we've had the conversation, don't know the answer. Later on, I push AT&T really, really, really hard and they finally tell me, okay, we are letting HBO Max sit outside of our data caps. They did not want to tell me this information. Like, I promise you, they, they were not happy to say it to me, but I pushed them really hard on it.

• 1:21:31Speaker 06

  Which is super weird because wouldn't they want to tell their customers? Wouldn't this be like a benefit of HBO Max for AT&T customers?

• 1:21:39Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, but if you look around, it's not in any of the marketing material. All the marketing material from HBO Max is, it's bundled into your certain AT&T home internet plans. It's bundled into our ultimate plans. It's free. But what they're talking about is the cost, the monthly cost of the service.

• 1:21:55Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:21:55Nilay Patel?

  So if you have AT&T unlimited, elite, preferred 25, whatever their insane names are, HBO Max comes for free. If you have AT&T home internet, 1,000 HBO Max is for free. If you have one of their other plans, it's free for a month. Like, all of it is about that monthly service cost. Nowhere, in zero of their marketing, is there a reflection of whether or not it hits your data cap.

• 1:22:18Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:22:19Nilay Patel?

  So I pushed them really hard because it seemed insane to me that the CEO of HBO Max does not know this answer. That just doesn't, it didn't, didn't click right. So I pushed them really hard on it and they finally told me, it does not hit their mobile data caps. So if you buy a 10 gig a month plan from AT&T and they still sell them, they're, they used to be called mobile share plans and now they're called something else because they always change the name. But if you buy 10 gigs a month of data from AT&T and you stream HBO Max all day, you still have 10 gigs of data. You stream Netflix all day, you're, you've used up your data. If you have one of their unlimited plans, which have what they call soft caps, right now, the soft caps are set at 22 gigs and 50 gigs, depending on what you buy.

• 1:23:02Nilay Patel?

  So you have 22 gigs of what they call priority data, which just makes me sad. So you have 22 gigs of priority data, which means you get data. And if the tower is congested or the network is busy or something, your speeds will throttle down. Okay. So if you stream HBO Max all day on an AT&T unlimited plan, it does not affect your 22 gigs of priority data. If you stream Netflix all day on your unlimited plan, it hits that cap. Underneath this is a system they call sponsored data, which is a hedge to make it seem fair. I just want to be really clear about that.

• 1:23:39Speaker 06

  Sponsored data is the net neutrality equivalent of the E on the end of 5GE.

• 1:23:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, they all did it for a minute. So AT&T has had this program on sponsored data since 2014, which it's effectively zero rating. So if you're Netflix and you say, man, I don't want AT&T customers to use up their 10 gig data cap, I'm going to pay for that data myself. Right? So you can, you can write AT&T a check based on the predicted data usage of, of your customers and then whatever it's, you've sponsored their data. So now you can go advertise to your customers. Hey, you can stream Verge video stream service. We got to start our own streaming. We're like late to the party at this point. So let's just say it's a Verge. So you can stream Verge videos all day in AT&T and it won't hit your cap, but I have to pay for it. That's a check I have to write.

• 1:24:28Nilay Patel?

  Well, AT&T owns HBO Max. So HBO Max is writing a check to AT&T Mobility for sponsored data. So it's a cost for HBO Max and it's a revenue for AT&T Mobility. And at the top of AT&T, it's, it's just fake money. It just moved from one pocket to the other.

• 1:24:48Speaker 06

  Moving from one division to another.

• 1:24:49Nilay Patel?

  And they're totally fine with it because they don't have to like break out the, the P and L of HBO Max. It's just AT&T. If you're Netflix, that's real money you have to pay. So either you're now saying to AT&T customers as Netflix, we will hit your cap and HBO won't, which is, you know, if you're out on your phone, it is likely you'll pick HBO because it won't hit your cap. That's a, that's a choice you would rationally make. Or you're Netflix, you pay the real money and you pass the cost on to your customer, raising your prices or lowering your margin.

• 1:25:21Speaker 06

  Or you're Verge Video and you don't launch your service in the first place because you know, no one will pick it because they don't want to hit their cap and you don't want to have to pay for the sponsored data cost. And so all of a sudden, the lack of net neutrality has suppressed competition and therefore HBO Max wins.

• 1:25:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, or, or your startup costs get, yeah, your startup costs to start a new video streaming service and compete with HBO Max could just ever hire. So like, is that going to play out? We don't know. This is one of those, when net neutrality is going away, people said this was like a fairy tale, like it was a bomb that wouldn't go off, you know? Well, here it is. And the thing that strikes me is AT&T has not wanted to say it. And when we interviewed Tony, he didn't want to say it. And we pushed it out of them. And immediately, the thing that happened is a coalition of senators, Ed Markey, Ron Wyden, they sent a letter today being like, tell us about this year writing scheme. And I'm pretty sure the reason AT&T didn't want to say it is they did not want to attract

• 1:26:19Nilay Patel?

  this kind of scrutiny, even though there's no net neutrality, because it just doesn't seem fair for AT&T to exempt itself and not exempt everybody else. So the comparison is to T-Mobile, which has Binge On. So, you know, if you watch Netflix on your T-Mobile phone, it doesn't hit that data cap. But Binge On is an open program. Almost any service provider can sign up for it. It's free. You don't have to pay for the service providers don't have to pay for it. And it's like, it's not beloved in sort of net neutrality circles, but it's at least something close to open.

• 1:26:55Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:26:55Nilay Patel?

  So there's no, there's no gradations of competitiveness for video service providers. You just sign up for Binge On and you're like, yep, our video is going to stream at 40p. Whereas with AT&T, you have to pay them and they're effectively giving it to themselves for free with this accounting trick. That seems way more problematic in terms of maybe not legal net neutrality, but in terms of network operation.

• 1:27:18Speaker 06

  Do you think that AT&T was like nervous to say it? Because this is a company that is perfectly happy to lie to you about whether or not you have 5G in your status bar by putting 5GE. And yet they were, they were nervous to say this thing that their customers theoretically would want to hear. And I just can't help but wonder, why are they being nervous about it now? And like a year or three ago, they might not have been. And I just have to think that the streaming wars have heated up and now there are other companies with a huge bank account that have a history of suing people that might actually like cause some problems for them. So they're unhappy about the government scrutiny, but they're probably not eager at all to have Disney be like, hey, this is bullshit. We're going to use our club to do something about it.

• 1:27:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And it, you know, the net neutrality fight is tiresome as it is, has, it's not actually over, right? There are still state level net neutrality laws that haven't really been challenged. The public safety throttling has been remanded. Like, it's not over. Like, there's not. You can't quite say net neutrality is gone. It's gone, but there's like this ancillary fight next to it that isn't, it's not a stable ground for companies to operate on. So you can still smell it in the room. Yeah, that's, that's one way of thinking about it. So it's still, it's still there. And I think making these moves just gives more energy to California or New York or what

• 1:28:40Nilay Patel?

  have you to pass their net neutrality laws. And now they have, now they have something to say in terms of defending them. Here is a real concrete harm of not having a net neutrality law. And so we, California, are gonna vigorously defend it. And when we go to court, we're gonna say, look at this harm. And I, I just think, and I, I really mean this, like, I don't think Tony was dancing too much. It is the rational business decision for AT&T. It is legal for them to do it. The question is, should it be legal? The question is, should the internet have these kinds of gatekeepers? It's funny, we just had like, all of this conversation with Casey about Facebook moderating speech. The question is, do you want AT&T moderating in an, with another mechanism, what you're able to watch

• 1:29:24Nilay Patel?

  for free or not? And I, I've made this comparison 10,000 times. I will make it again. What we are cruising towards is AT&T customers streaming CNN for free and having Fox News hit their data cap. Just after that whole Facebook conversation, think about that next level of cost. Whatever you think of CNN, it's free to watch CNN. Whatever you think of Fox, it's gonna cost money to watch Fox, just by dint of the data plan that you have. That is, to me, has always been problematic. It has always been the heart of the conversation. So we'll see. But it was just, it was a real roller coaster to get AT&T to tell me this information. And now we're seeing some scrutiny of it. Let's talk about Google and TV, man.

• 1:30:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, so the XDA, first it was 95 Google and then XDA developers got leaks of the upcoming Android TV thing. We don't know what it's going to be called. To me, it makes sense that they would call it like Nest TV because they're using Nest for their home products. But it looks like it's basically a successor to the Chromecast that is a Chromecast but happens to run Android TV. So it has a remote control and it runs Android TV. And, you know, it's codenamed Sabrina. We don't know what's coming out, presumably in the fall. There's rumors it'll cost, I think, a protocol had that was going to cost less than 80 bucks. So there's a new version coming. So, great. It'll be cheaper than the Apple TV, but like, that's no, no big accomplishment because everything's cheaper than the Apple TV. But the thing that's interesting to me is this is the 50th time that Google has tried

• 1:30:52Speaker 06

  to get TV right. And the only success that they've had was like the Chromecast. So they're trying to build off that, I guess. But I also think that if they're smart, they're gonna build off YouTube and they'll make YouTube feel like a first-class citizen on the main UI. And if you just think about the main UIs on different devices, like Apple has just got a grid of icons because they can't get anybody to use the Apple TV app on the Apple TV. And no one wants to like participate in that. We've had all these debates and we've had Julian talking about reverse carriage disputes. You think people don't like Apple and don't want to be in there? Like, the number of fights that Google has had with cable companies over the years would blow your mind. So like, the thing that

• 1:31:35Speaker 06

  Google has to do is like, put YouTube front and center and maybe YouTube TV front and center, which sort of is interesting because like, it could be like, if you use Google stuff and live in Google land, you should get the Google TV. If you use Apple stuff and live in Apple land, you should get the Apple TV. And if you use Amazon stuff and live as Amazon land, you should get a Fire TV. And so the, the stick attached to your television is becoming part of like, the ecosystem buy-in that you need to live with in a really real way.

• 1:32:02Nilay Patel?

  It's interesting because, Julia, today, minutes before we started recording, published a piece about Roku's numbers. Roku now controls nearly 45% of connected TV viewing time. So the total number of minutes watched on smart TVs, 45% of those minutes are on Roku devices. The next highest Amazon Fire TV, 19%.

• 1:32:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, so Roku is winning, but they're, they're, they're very good at getting on cheap TVs. Their, their hardware devices are cheap and they're also like easy to understand. And they're relatively neutral because they're relatively non-threatening to these other companies. So like

• 1:32:40Nilay Patel?

  That's changing, right? They're threatening to HBO Max. HBO Max is not on the Roku platform.

• 1:32:45Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 1:32:45Nilay Patel?

  And that, like, they're starting to flex a little bit. The underlying HBO Max, we've, we've seen some reporting, Julia's done some reporting. HBO Max is not on the platform because eventually they're going to launch an ad-supported version of HBO Max. And Tony basically said that to us, like, it's not now, it'll come down the line. If you run ads on a Roku, they want a cut of that money. That's part of their business model and HBO is fighting against them. And like, they don't have the app now because they're having the fight about the version of HBO Max that's coming in the future. It makes sense, you should do that, but Roku is at a place where they can say, "We will not have HBO Max on our platform at all because we control so many minutes of viewing time."

• 1:33:26Speaker 06

  So, once again, we're, we're talking about a platform banning content based on money in the background. It's like, it's like TV neutrality issue.

• 1:33:36Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god. Remember web browsers? Web browsers are great. They, uh...

• 1:33:40Speaker 06

  Can we just briefly talk about, uh, when I was writing this, like, uh, you know, article in the newsletter, uh, I wanted to just call back to all the things that went wrong with, with Google TV's efforts over the years. And I completely forgot that in 2016, the Tom Wheeler FCC and the bottom administration tried to force all cable companies to allow neutrality for cable boxes. So anybody can make a cable box that would work with your cable system.

• 1:34:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:06Speaker 06

  Like, this is a thing that happened.

• 1:34:08Nilay Patel?

  It was called hashtag unlock the box.

• 1:34:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:34:10Nilay Patel?

  This was a period of time when like, the FCC would call me with like, exciting activism news. And I'd write it up as though it was gonna be a thing.

• 1:34:17Speaker 06

  By the way, this went nowhere. They, they eventually were like, "Maybe just make apps if please, please just make apps." That was, that was where that ended up.

• 1:34:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, so it's, it's interesting to pull that apart. Like, the cable TV system was another kind of network. It was adjacent to the internet, but it was a video, one-way video broadcast network.

• 1:34:36Speaker 06

  That was an upstart designed to like, break the establishment of broadcast TV.

• 1:34:41Nilay Patel?

  That's true. And eventually they added like, some amount of interactivity to that video network, right? You could make purchases and buy video on demand. You could do pay-per-view, all this stuff. But it was still like basically a one-way broadcast network. And when they went to digital, they encrypted it. And the idea was we should allow anybody to build a box that will encrypt this bundle of video channels that's being sent into your house. And the first cut at that was cable card, which is just continues to limp along as some kind of disaster. And then the second part was we'll do it in software. We'll build a set of standards and then anybody can do it. And Google was super hot on this. And they actually built some prototypes. They showed me some prototypes of like, we can, we can decrypt spectrum and we can build our own guide in UI.

• 1:35:23Nilay Patel?

  And what you would, what you eventually had as a model was just like you buy the internet and bits come into your house and you have all kinds of front end to internet service. You should be able to buy any front end you want to video service. And if you want the Google interface for cable or the Apple interface, and this would have been great, and the cable companies are stupid and they shut it down and said eventually we're going to stream anything, everything anyway. And now we're at a place where everything is streaming, everything is apps and it is incredibly expensive, hard to find anything. And what people really want is something that looks an awful, like a cable box built by Apple or Google or Roku. And it's just like this cycle just keeps repeating.

• 1:36:06Nilay Patel?

  And the cable companies don't realize like, oh, we should just charge people an extra 50 bucks a month for a video services package and let anybody build an interface for it? Because that we're, we're cruising right back to it with Netflix and HBO Max and whatever. People are, they just want a bundle pricing. That's my prediction. I don't know if it's going to go anywhere. I'm assuming Julia will have a better read on it than I do because she's in it. But it's just funny how fast we're cruising back to a cable model. We'll just see how it goes.

• 1:36:34Speaker 06

  Yeah. One last thing, real quick, because we're running long, you know?

• 1:36:38Nilay Patel?

  Very long.

• 1:36:39Speaker 06

  Chris Welch reviewed the app mode, the, the new ARC from Sonos that supports Atmos. I know you've got one in your house.

• 1:36:45Nilay Patel?

  Like I do.

• 1:36:46Speaker 06

  Other than like looking like really dumb because it's just full of holes.

• 1:36:51Nilay Patel?

  It looks great. I will, I will say this.

• 1:36:52Speaker 06

  It looks great, really? It looks terrible. Like our very, very good photos still, I'm like, uh, no, thank you.

• 1:36:58Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no, it's great. It's, it's, it's very black. It is on a, the white one, I don't know why anybody would buy a white one.

• 1:37:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:04Nilay Patel?

  Like, why would you want a glowing white bar under your TV? When you're watching movies, but the black one basically disappears.

• 1:37:10Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:37:11Nilay Patel?

  And it is actually, it's so hard to do these products launch now because we don't see them in person until we get through review units. So I was very skeptical of it being made of plastic. It looks great. It's totally fine. It sounds great.

• 1:37:24Speaker 06

  Really?

• 1:37:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So it's here. It's in the next room in my basement, sort of media room. I have like the full Atmos system here. I have a Denon receiver. I've got, um, I think it's 5.1.2. So I've got speakers in the ceilings for the height channel. I watch it. Everyone knows like all the lights. It is totally competitive with that system.

• 1:37:43Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 1:37:44Nilay Patel?

  It's absolutely competitive.

• 1:37:45Speaker 06

  Competitive with that system in turn, it's like, what? You end up spending like two grand to get like the soundbar, the sub and a couple of surrounds?

• 1:37:53Nilay Patel?

  No, no, just the arc itself. No, nothing.

• 1:37:56Speaker 06

  Really?

• 1:37:57Nilay Patel?

  I mean, you should buy, you should get the sub because it's like, sub looks cool and it makes all the explosions boomier. But like in terms of immersion, so my favorite Atmos test scene is the opening scene of Baby Driver.

• 1:38:10Speaker 06

  Okay. Yeah.

• 1:38:10Nilay Patel?

  Just like, there's like a lot of stuff whizzing around. The music's fun. There's a helicopter that goes by.

• 1:38:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:38:16Nilay Patel?

  It's just like a really good test of the thing. Like it's all really loud, but can you place this one helicopter or the siren? Like right at the beginning of that scene, you hear a helicopter go by.

• 1:38:25Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:38:26Nilay Patel?

  So it's like, that's the thing I test everything with Atmos, like the, the arc, running that scene in Atmos, totally as immersive as my seven channel, real Atmos system with speakers in the ceiling.

• 1:38:37Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:38:38Nilay Patel?

  Surprisingly so. And in some cases better because my, all of my speakers are in the ceiling, uh, the, my rears are in the ceiling too.

• 1:38:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:38:46Nilay Patel?

  And the Atmos bounces sound off the rear wall. So it can locate them in, in like height, a little bit more accurately.

• 1:38:51Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:38:52Nilay Patel?

  That said, I have a fairly low ceiling and I have a wall right behind my couch. So what the arc is doing is it's bouncing sound off of all those surfaces. I took it upstairs, which is a much more open main living room. All that surround it just like went away. It doesn't, if you don't have the walls, it doesn't work. So if you have a fairly normal living room, which is a box.

• 1:39:11Speaker 06

  Well, and if you have a fairly new TV, because this whole thing runs off HDMI ARC. There's only one input. It is the input of HDMI input that has to come out of your TV. And only recent TVs fully support Atmos. So like your options for like this whole, I don't know. Like, I don't get it. Every other high end soundbar, like they, they give you the stuff. Like, did you see the Dyson finally put out, like, we wanted to make this electric car, but we can't do it. And so here's what we would have made. I've got a point here. Did you see it?

• 1:39:42Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:39:42Speaker 06

  Go look at the, the post for Dyson's proposed electric car and go look at the steering wheel. In particular, it is covered in buttons and switches and dials. And they're, they're amazing. It's right out of like a 1984, like cyberpunk movie, B movie. It's terrible. It's amazing. When you buy high end audio shit, you expect to have like some gee gaws, right? And Sonos is like, we hate gee gaws. There's one input. And if your TV supports it, bully for you. If it doesn't, you get a degraded experience. The end. And that's just like weird, right?

• 1:40:18Nilay Patel?

  I asked, so let me unpack the tech geek side of it. Here's, and I have a theory that I, is unconfirmed. So the way Atmos works is object based surround. It doesn't have discrete channels. It just locates sound in a, in like sound objects in the field. And then the, the system processes it however it's going to, to try to locate those objects. You can send Atmos out in a compressed way over Dolby Digital Plus. Some TVs can do it and that's compressed Atmos. My TV cannot. Chris Welch's TV cannot. So my 2016 LG OLED cannot send out Dolby Digital Plus over its ARC port, over HDMI.

• 1:41:00Nilay Patel?

  If you, if you use optical, you can't do it. You're just like stuck. Some TVs in the middle of that figured out how to send Dolby Digital Plus out over ARC. Standard HDMI audio return channel ARC.

• 1:41:13Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:41:14Nilay Patel?

  So you can get compressed Atmos to the Sonos ARC over ARC. The name is confusing in this context, but just hear me out.

• 1:41:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's also EARC, which is like.

• 1:41:23Nilay Patel?

  Right. Then the new standard is EARC, which is Enhanced Audio Return Channel. EARC is higher bandwidth. It can support uncompressed Dolby Atmos, some other uncompressed formats. It has a data sync channel, so it can automatically sync the image on the screen and the audio, so you don't get weird lip sync problems. It's enhanced. It's enhanced ARC. It has been enhanced.

• 1:41:47Speaker 06

  So the E in front of it means it's real. The E after it is fake. Is that the distinction here?

• 1:41:53Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, so new TVs, super new TVs have EARC. Like it's the new standard. If you have an older TV, 2016 or below, you probably won't get Atmos on this thing. If you have a 2017 TV, I would say.

• 1:42:09Speaker 06

  Google it.

• 1:42:09Nilay Patel?

  It's a Google it, look at AVS forum, people make lists. If you have, if you bought a TV this year, it's gonna be fun. My guess, and so this is annoying, in order for me to test Atmos here, Sonos sent me a new Sony TV. Because my TV can't do it. And even though I have an Apple TV and a Chromecast and a Roku and all these other Atmos devices, because it has to pass through my TV and then go into the, the Sonos, it won't work.

• 1:42:34Speaker 06

  This is like, how much does a soundbar cost?

• 1:42:35Nilay Patel?

  $800.

• 1:42:36Speaker 06

  Some portion of people who want to buy this thing are people who A, want to have Atmos and B, have already bought a big ass, nice TV. That isn't, like, they bought it early enough because they're early adopters that it doesn't happen to support it.

• 1:42:51Nilay Patel?

  I am getting emails from people who own the LG B6 OLED, which was like the first mass market reasonably priced point OLED.

• 1:42:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, so like.

• 1:42:59Nilay Patel?

  And they're mad. I'm mad.

• 1:43:00Speaker 06

  Well, but Sonos chose to only have the one ARC HDMI port on this thing. They could have chosen to put the Gigas on it. Because like, what some portion of their customer base would, would want it. And you'd think a relatively large portion.

• 1:43:15Nilay Patel?

  Well, so I think there's two arguments here. The first argument I sort of understand, which is Atmos isn't like everywhere yet.

• 1:43:24Nilay Patel?

  And doing HDMI pass through adds a level of complexity to the system.

• 1:43:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:43:28Nilay Patel?

  That Sonos doesn't want to engage. And most people are not us and they don't care about Atmos. They're gonna plug it in and they're gonna get 5.1 out of their older TV and it's still gonna sound great and it's great.

• 1:43:37Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:43:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's like, and that's basically the argument Patrick Spence made to us.

• 1:43:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:43:42Nilay Patel?

  You can go listen to that interview. The second argument, which I'm, I actually had this guess that people buy TVs and soundbars together. So yeah, there are some people who have older TVs like me, they're gonna be upset, but most people go to Best Buy, they buy the package, TV, soundbar together. The person comes, puts on the wall and that's it until you buy a new TV and a soundbar. So I asked Patrick Spence, he said that is correct. He told me there are three other trade offs into not having the thing. He said, one, you have ease of use. You have, you have to start letting people select inputs. You have to add an additional remote to control inputs. That's just not their philosophy. They don't want to do that. He said it would affect sound performance because they'd have to change the internal design of the product.

• 1:44:23Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:44:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, okay. But that's what he told me. It would take more space inside the product. It would affect sound. And he said, we're placing a bet on EARC as we believe it is the long-term industry trend. So they built the product for the future. So they've got this, this moment where I think some, some people who are early adopters are gonna be mad.

• 1:44:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:44:41Nilay Patel?

  But this is, the product itself will last for a much longer time and they didn't have to build all this like input menuing.

• 1:44:46Speaker 06

  Well, given how long they, they kept the playbar in the market, yeah, they don't, they don't want to redesign this thing for like two decades.

• 1:44:54Nilay Patel?

  Forty-five years now, like EARC is the thing. So that's the answer. I, I really think that people buy TVs and soundbars together is, from their perspective, very compelling. From my perspective is, a guy whose TV can't do it is less compelling. But, there it is.

• 1:45:10Speaker 06

  Well, and I guess for them, like, if you are not in that group and whatever, like, the Beam is actually a super good deal. So just go get a Beam and stop complaining.

• 1:45:18Nilay Patel?

  Right? Yeah, I mean, I think this does a really credible job with 5.1 surround. Like, you can still get that, it still works, it still sounds like surround sound. I, you know, I wrote this line that our commenters are taking some issue with, which is like, it's $800, it's a lot of money. If you add a sub, it's $1,400. Like, it's a lot of money. But in terms of cost and complexity versus a standard Atmos system, it actually makes a very convincing case for itself. Because, I don't know, I had to cut circles into my ceiling and run wire.

• 1:45:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:52Nilay Patel?

  And hide the wire and make it look nice. And I had to do that eight times.

• 1:45:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, I live in an apartment, so like, I can't, I can't do that. So I gotta like, put little poles up or mounts, or just mount visible speakers up there, or I can just get this. I'm not gonna get this, because I don't think my Vizio supports it, but I...

• 1:46:06Nilay Patel?

  See what I'm saying? And you get this like, extremely credible surround sound experience. And I think, I just, I say it over and over and over again. If you have $1,500 to spend, which I understand right now, you might not, but like, that's how much you, we talk about spending on the flagship phones all the time.

• 1:46:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:46:27Nilay Patel?

  Right, the top end note, when it comes out, is right at $1,200, $1,300. An iPhone 11 Pro Max, $1,235, whatever the numbers are, with the top end storage, is right at $1,200, $1,300. If you, even like your phone, like, the better money to spend is Dolby Vision TV and an Atmos soundbar. And I think, this to me, given that it's connected to the rest of the Sonos ecosystem, given that it has support for all of the services, given that you can just like, AirPlay to it, like, this is the $800 you should spend on a soundbar, and then, you know, buy the 65-inch TCL Roku TV. You won't get HBO Max quite yet, but you get a Dolby Vision TV, and now you're home, and all of your entertainment's at home,

• 1:47:07Nilay Patel?

  and you've got, effectively, a competitive theater soundup, a competitive theater setup. That's a way better value for dollar than a phone, right, to me, right now.

• 1:47:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:19Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, I wish, people ask me, oh, I didn't make a video. It's like, how do you make a video about helicopters sounding like they're behind you?

• 1:47:26Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:47:27Nilay Patel?

  You can't. So, like, it's hard, it's hard to explain, but it's definitely worth checking out. And I just continue to believe, like, if you're at home, and you're consuming all of your entertainment at home, spend the money on the TV and the audio, and you will be just so much happier than a moderate increase in cellphone picture quality. That's it. We have gone now, I think, an hour, two hours is what my recorder says.

• 1:47:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:52Nilay Patel?

  So here's what we're gonna do. Andrew's gonna speed everything up by 10%. This Verchass is gonna be 45 minutes long. We're gonna sound like chipmunks. Dieter, tell them about your newsletter.

• 1:48:00Speaker 06

  I have a newsletter. It's called Processor. You can find it at theverge.com/newsletter. And it's about computers.

• 1:48:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Casey's on. You can subscribe to the interface. It's obviously the interaction between Dieter's newsletter and the interface is like all of the things we're interested in. So it's good to have them both. They play off each other. We have just, our run of interview episodes continues. Next week, Ashley, Carmen and I interviewed the CEO of Tinder.

• 1:48:22Speaker 06

  Ooh.

• 1:48:22Nilay Patel?

  Ali Siedman. He was super interesting. I'll give you a little preview. Tinder video dates have to be chaperoned for obvious reasons. So they're building AI chaperones for video dates.

• 1:48:33Speaker 06

  Amazing.

• 1:48:34Nilay Patel?

  But just to make sure you don't do the bad.

• 1:48:36Speaker 06

  Quite a job.

• 1:48:37Nilay Patel?

  It was a wild conversation. That's coming on Tuesday. Back on Friday with a chat show. Tweet at us. I'm at Reckless. Dieter's at Backlon. Casey's at Casey Newton. Lauren Grush is at Lauren Grush. That's it. Rock and roll. Paul.

• 1:49:08Speaker 10

  Online Deal Days are back at Kroger. Don't miss your chance for extra savings when you shop, pick up, or delivery. You can save $30 on your first online order of $75 or more with your digital coupon. Plus, enjoy unlimited free delivery by starting a Boost Free trial today. But hurry, these extra savings end October 20th. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger. Fresh for everyone.

• 1:49:38Speaker 11

  Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claud.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claud.ai/spotify.