Escape From Burning Man + Musk vs. the A.D.L. + Listener Questions

This week: How tech executives’ favorite place to take their pants off turned into a muddy hellscape. We talk to one executive who couldn’t just call a helicopter to escape. Then, Jonathan Greenblatt, C. E. O. of the Anti-Defamation League, on how his organization went from having a “productive” meeting with X’s C. E. O., Linda Yaccarino, last week to being threatened with a lawsuit by Elon Musk on Monday. Plus, Kevin and Casey answer your questions.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:35Casey Newton?

  I have this issue. I made the mistake of buying a smart toothbrush. Have you ever done this?

• 0:40Kevin Roose?

  No.

• 0:40Casey Newton?

  You've never like bought a toothbrush that has an app associated with it?

• 0:43Kevin Roose?

  No, I like my toothbrush is dumb.

• 0:45Casey Newton?

  OK, well, I think I do too after this experience because I buy the toothbrush, I install the app, and within a month or so, I've realized that the core function of the app is just to tell you to go buy more toothbrush heads. But this is the business model.

• 1:01Kevin Roose?

  What is the app nominally for? Is it like to time your toothbrush?

• 1:03Casey Newton?

  Exactly. It's like, you know, oh, you've been averaging, you know, a minute 48 seconds. You really got to get up to two minutes, right? So that's the sort of what they're selling you. But in reality, it's been like, it's been three days since you last changed your toothbrush head. I think it's time to, you know, restart. So obviously, I ignore this, right? It's like, come on, I'll replace the brush head when I'm good and ready. Well, then I'm like in my office and I get a buzz on my watch and the app has somehow managed to contact my watch to say, hey, the toothbrush isn't connected to the wifi anymore. You need to fix this problem. I thought, what sort of hell world do I live in that I'm letting my toothbrush talk to my watch? We have to go back.

• 1:41Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, this is, this is what the Jetsons worst nightmare was.

• 1:44Casey Newton?

  Really, it was. This was the Halloween episode of the Jetsons. And we have to shut it down.

• 1:52Kevin Roose?

  You know what the best way for a toothbrush to connect to the internet is?

• 1:55Casey Newton?

  What's that?

• 1:55Kevin Roose?

  Bluetooth.

• 1:59Casey Newton?

  OK, well, we should probably start the show.

• 2:08Kevin Roose?

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

• 2:10Casey Newton?

  I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.

• 2:11Kevin Roose?

  And you're listening to Heart Fork.

• 2:13Casey Newton?

  This week, Escape from Burning Man. We talked to one tech exec who fought his way out of the mud. Then Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, joins us to respond to Elon Musk's threats to sue his organization. And finally, your toughest questions about AI and tech. You know anything about those two things, Kevin?

• 2:34Kevin Roose?

  Not a thing.

• 2:35Casey Newton?

  Shoot.

• 2:44Casey Newton?

  Well, Kevin, we have a special message for all the people who sent us messages saying, please do an emergency podcast about what happened at Burning Man last week. And that message is, we hear you and we see you, and this segment is for you.

• 2:56Kevin Roose?

  Yes, we have to talk about Burning Man because this is actually a very important event in the tech industry. I think people sometimes don't believe that, but it is true. As I said a few weeks ago, I went once 10 years ago.

• 3:08Casey Newton?

  You famously took a shower with a Google executive.

• 3:11Kevin Roose?

  Yes, and I thought that was maybe the worst thing that could possibly happen at Burning Man. But as it turns out, I was just not using my imagination because this year's Burning Man was an absolute nightmare.

• 3:22Casey Newton?

  A bit more of a drowning man than a burning man, I have to say.

• 3:26Kevin Roose?

  So as I'm sure folks have heard, the week-long festival in the Nevada desert known as Burning Man was interrupted this year by a rainstorm. On Friday, it started pouring. And by Saturday, the desert had become so thick with mud that it was apparently hard to walk or operate a vehicle. Attendees were told to shelter in place. They were not allowed to enter or exit the festival, and they were told to conserve food and water.

• 3:52Casey Newton?

  Yeah, and so this became a sensation on social media. I think there was a lot of schadenfreude from people who think that, you know-

• 3:58Kevin Roose?

  Schadenfreude.

• 3:59Casey Newton?

  Listen, I never actually took German, okay? I don't know what prep school you went to, but on the mean streets of La Habra, California, they offered Spanish and French.

• 4:09Kevin Roose?

  Okay, tell me more about this schadenfreude they felt.

• 4:12Casey Newton?

  Listen, I think a lot of people think, look, look at all these- Tech bros in the desert. It's a very silly thing that the fact that they're all literally stuck in the mud is something to laugh about. And, you know, I'll admit, I may have chuckled a bit, but I, I am not here to make fun of the people who went to Burning Man. I actually want to just hear about the experience of being there.

• 4:31Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. So as someone who's been to Burning Man, I was fascinated by just the logistics of it all because it is already a mess to get in and out of Burning Man. The lines are very long.

• 4:40Casey Newton?

  Yeah, why is that? It's in the middle of the desert. Like, what are, why is there so many lines?

• 4:43Kevin Roose?

  Because there's one gate. You have to go through the gate. There, there are only two ways. You can arrive on, you know, in your car or your RV or whatever, or they actually have a little airport that they set up just for the week.

• 4:52Casey Newton?

  That's probably what I would do.

• 4:53Kevin Roose?

  And so all the rich, the tech billionaires, they fly in through the airport.

• 4:57Casey Newton?

  Right. Smart.

• 4:58Kevin Roose?

  But the airport was closed.

• 4:59Casey Newton?

  Oh.

• 5:00Kevin Roose?

  The road was closed.

• 5:01Casey Newton?

  Got it.

• 5:02Kevin Roose?

  Due to the rains. So it's like, you actually like can't get anywhere. Your car will get stuck if you try to drive in. And there were some videos of people, you know, having to be pushed out of a mud pit because their, their RV got stuck or whatever.

• 5:15Casey Newton?

  Right.

• 5:16Kevin Roose?

  I had one friend who was there, who's a reporter and had actually spent time in the Middle East, in Iraq, reporting and said that this was more harrowing than that.

• 5:24Casey Newton?

  Wow.

• 5:27Kevin Roose?

  That actually trying to escape from Burning Man was, was a more traumatizing experience than being embedded in the Middle East.

• 5:34Casey Newton?

  Can we have him on the show too? I would love to talk to him. I'll tell you one thing I will say about this story is like, do you ever like get invited to a party and you don't want to go to that party? And the next day, like you text your friend and you're like, how was that party? And they're like, oh my God, it was horrible. And you're just like, yeah, like it's so exciting to find out that a party that you didn't want to go to is bad. I am having a bit of that with this year's Burning Man. Where it's like, I knew I didn't want to go, but then you do see the video footage of people caked in mud and like tromping through this like quicksand and you think, I made the right choice for myself.

• 6:05Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. And, and so not only was this a logistical challenge for getting in and out, but a lot of the festival also sort of relies on things being able to get in, like, like tanks to clean the porta potties. And so you had this kind of escalating set of problems that people were posting about where like, you know, all the porta potties were kicked in mud and they hadn't been cleaned in days and it was getting unhygienic. And it, it just felt like this is maybe an experiment that has gone wrong.

• 6:30Casey Newton?

  You know, two words that I heard in the context of this year's Burning Man that I hadn't heard since a high school history class?

• 6:36Kevin Roose?

  What's that?

• 6:36Casey Newton?

  Trench foot.

• 6:40Kevin Roose?

  Yes, trench foot, the medical condition that was very hot in World War I.

• 6:45Casey Newton?

  And if you don't know what trench foot is, and I'm not Googling this right now, it's caused by prolonged exposure to cold temperature that is usually above freezing and damp and sometimes unsanitary conditions, and it can ultimately cause skin and tissue breakdown. And that's just, essentially, it is a risk of walking around in the mud for a long time.

• 7:05Kevin Roose?

  It is.

• 7:06Casey Newton?

  Yeah.

• 7:06Kevin Roose?

  You know, on one level, this is a story about a festival gone wrong.

• 7:10Casey Newton?

  Sure.

• 7:10Kevin Roose?

  Right? And you can imagine something like this happening at Coachella, or Electric Zoo, or any of the other places where people go to take drugs and dance and have a good time.

• 7:20Casey Newton?

  Yeah.

• 7:21Kevin Roose?

  And we don't want to yuck anyone's yum here on Hard Fork.

• 7:23Casey Newton?

  Never.

• 7:23Kevin Roose?

  We are tolerant of all parties and all partiers.

• 7:26Casey Newton?

  We celebrate joy.

• 7:27Kevin Roose?

  Exactly. But I think there's something here that is interesting, which is that Burning Man has had a big influence on the modern day tech industry, to an extent that I don't think people who don't live in the Bay Area or go to Burning Man can fully appreciate.

• 7:41Casey Newton?

  Absolutely. And by the way, there is an idea in Burning Man that I think is relevant to some things we've been talking about here recently, which is this kind of tech utopianism, right? Last week, we were talking about the billionaires who want to build a tech utopia in Solana County. This week, we're talking about another tech utopia that maybe went a little bit awry. But there is something that runs very deep here in the minds of people who work in tech, which is if you could just kind of rip it up and start again, you could make something better.

• 8:07Kevin Roose?

  So our guest today is Adrian Aoun. He is a longtime Burning Man attendee. He's a former Google employee who used to run something called Sidewalk Labs, which was kind of, to your point, this sort of like tech utopian project. They were trying to make Connected Neighborhood in Toronto. But now, he is the CEO and founder of the Health Tech Startup Forward. And we're going to talk to him today, not about his startup, or about his time at Google, but about his time at Burning Man and how he got out. Adrian Aoun, welcome to Hard Fork.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be on.

• 8:40Kevin Roose?

  So you are, in addition to a Burning Man escapee this year, you've been actually going to Burning Man for a long time. I think you said this was your seventh time at Burning Man. So just to start, can you just explain sort of how you got interested in going to Burning Man and why you keep going back?

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's a little hard to kind of be a tech executive in San Francisco and not end up at Burning Man. It's kind of like, you know, you do your Sand Hill Road pitches and then I think they just like ship us in bulk. But, um, but look, I went because another startup founder who's a very close friend of mine at one point was like, "You gotta do this." And it was actually, I was working at Google at the time. Uh, I was working for the founder Larry Page. And he was my boss and he kept being like, "Adrian, you really gotta go." And I'm like, "When your boss at Google is telling you to go to Burning Man, like, maybe it's not, this isn't Coachella anymore, right?"

• 9:31Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, this is going on your performance review.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, honestly, it really felt like it was. I'm not even joking. Um, and, uh, and so I was like, "Okay, I gotta go check this thing out."

• 9:40Casey Newton?

  And by the way, this is how a previous generation was forced to start golfing. Uh, Burning Man is just kind of the next evolution of that.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  You can make fun of the burners all you want. At least we're not wearing like plaid pants on the block.

• 9:51Casey Newton?

  Hey, amen, amen. Well said.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  So, so, okay, so I go to Burning Man, um, and I guess the thing that was like insightful or kind of, I don't know, like life-changing about it is, here's probably the best analogy I can use, and you're gonna forgive me, this is kind of a weird one. If I was like walking down the street right now in San Francisco and I was like, looked perfectly normal, but I had no pants on, you'd be like, "What the fuck is going, like, that guy is weird. Like, there is something going on with this guy. He's a crazy dude." But that's because we've taken a normal world and we've changed just one variable. On the other hand, when you're at Burning Man, you're not changing one variable, you're changing like all the variables, right? It's like, I don't have a normal name, I've got some made-up name. I don't talk about work, I don't have a phone, I don't have a watch, there's no concept

• 10:36Speaker 03

  of an economy, I can't buy anything, there's no brands or any, like, everything has changed. And when everything has changed, all of a sudden, you're like, "Wait, I have no more frame of reference anymore. Like, I don't know what to expect." And so the reason this was really cool was like, there's a lot of things that you take for granted in society that you think, "Of course those are normal, of course they make sense." Where all of a sudden, you're like, "Maybe they don't make sense. Maybe we should reimagine them." And what I realized afterwards in conversations with Larry at Google was, the reason Larry wanted me to go is, he was really interested in like, can we create our own cities? Can we create like this new universe that just has different set of rules, a different social contract? And I actually became incredibly interested in it, uh, after going to Burning Man.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  So I ended up starting one of the Alphabet companies called Sidewalk Labs. It was literally like, can we just rewrite the rules the way we would want to write them today?

• 11:26Kevin Roose?

  So you have this sort of reality bending experience of Burning Man that keeps you going back. When you went this year, what were you hoping for? And did you read the weather forecast ahead of time?

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Okay, so, so no and yes and maybe. Okay, so here's the deal. You can't really have massive expectations going into Burning Man. It's like, look, you're in the Wild West, right? You have no clue what the rules are. You can't get anything on demand. There is no Amazon one day delivery kind of nonsense. So it turns out like you're gonna get whatever you get and you better, you better damn well like it. And so, so to answer your other question, like, look, I barely looked at the weather. We flew into Burning Man and I've become a pilot recently, so I'm like paying attention a little to the weather. But frankly, it was like clear skies when we were going in. So I wasn't really paying attention to much of that. What was interesting is when we got there, at, you know, a couple of days in, the rain started to hit.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  And because I'm like, you know, kind of a nerd in Silicon Valley, you know, becoming a pilot, like all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, I can go pull like the weather reports. You should look at the weather reports that pilots pull. They're like 150 pages. And everybody's like, oh, it's some light drizzle. It's gonna be done later today. And I'm looking and I'm like, nope, not a chance. Like, there's literally a whole bunch of weather moving in. This is gonna be a few days. And for me, I was like, I was planning on flying out. I'm like, well, we're definitely not flying out, cuz like the, the, you know, Blackrock Airport is gonna be closed. But then I started getting a little stressed cuz I was like, wait a minute. I don't actually want, like, today's the day I was supposed to leave. I don't wanna be here another like three days. I love the Playa, but when you're done with the Playa, you wanna get the hell out of Dodge.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  And so, so that's when we started being like, well, we need some alternative plan. And, you know, you go through like your mental checklist, like, well, we could drive out. We actually didn't have a car, but there were some other cars. And then you just look around and you're like, like, I want you to picture the Playa as like a scene out of like Hogwarts or something. It's like, it is just covered in mud. It's covered in water. When was Hogwarts covered in mud?

• 13:28Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, I'm getting more of a Mad Max vibe.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, it feels very Mad Max covered. No, come on, in the one where they were like doing the maze in the competitions, that Okay, maybe it wasn't Hogwarts, but it was Harry Potter.

• 13:39Casey Newton?

  All right.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  Um, uh, I'm not even a good nerd. I'm just half a nerd. I can't even get my, my, my quotes right. Okay.

• 13:44Casey Newton?

  I mean, like, here's what I'll say. Someone on that playa probably was playing Quidditch. Like, that is something that I assume.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  So actually, my favorite thing that I saw, literally my favorite thing, is like, my favorite was these two people that were just like literally buck naked and they were just like rolling around in the mud. And I'm like, you guys went burning, man. Like, I, I, all I could picture was like, you know, when you watch like pigs in the pigpen like moving, I'm like, they're just having fun. They're enjoying this. I have no clue how they were gonna clean themselves after, cuz there, there were barely bathrooms you can use. So I was like, good luck, guys, but you do you.

• 14:18Casey Newton?

  So, Adrian, so, so when the rain starts coming down, is, are, are, is there shelter for it? Like, what do you do when just all the rain starts coming down?

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Well, so remember, like, most people are kind of in a tent, an RV, or a shift pod. A shift pod is basically like a fancy tent. So all of us just kind of retreat in there at first cuz we're like, whatever, it's just gonna be a couple hours. Then kind of all the messages start coming. So we're, we're part of a camp, a bigger camp, and all the camps just start being like, no, it's shelter in place, no more cars allowed to drive around the playa, you basically can't use your bike, because the thing about this mud, it's not like mud that, I don't know, in your garden at your house. This is mud that's more, I want you to picture clay. Like, it gets on you and then it hardens. So like, I was wearing these boots, I literally couldn't keep wearing my boots. Each boot weighed like 20 pounds. Imagine if like, you know, in the mafia is like, we want you to drown in the water and they put some bricks on your feet?

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. I had concrete shoes, for sure, exactly. And so all of a sudden, you're like, well, fuck, um, I'm in my, in my case, like, I'm in a, in a shift pod. Uh, and then you're like, well, that's fine for a couple hours. Then you're like, ah, I wonder if our camp is serving dinner tonight? No, they are not serving dinner tonight. So you're like, okay, no problem. Like, we've got food, we'll make our own food, we're good, we're good. It's kind of slightly escalating, slightly escalating. And then you're like, oh, god, I gotta use the bathroom. Like, you really don't wanna go and try and judge to them. So at some point, you go to like a pee bucket, right? And so there's now like buckets over, like, in the RV, there's a bucket in the shift pod, there's a bucket, everybody's just like peeing in these buckets. It's pretty gross. And then, at some point, you're like, wait, I don't need to just pee. And that's where you're like, all bets are off, you know?

• 15:51Speaker 03

  And like, some people are doing it in the RVs. I'm like, no, I am braving. I'm going to this outdoor bathroom whether you like it or not.

• 15:58Casey Newton?

  But you know, Adrian, I do want to ask you about this because I think a lot of times when you see a kind of natural disaster like this, people assume that everyone turns on each other and it becomes Lord of the Flies. In fact, in practice, everyone just actually starts helping each other, I think, most of the time, and it seems like that's what happened to Burning Man.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  Okay, so first off, can we not call this a natural disaster? I feel like Haiti right now is looking at us being like, "Shut up, you douchebags."

• 16:24Casey Newton?

  Okay, fair enough, fair enough.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  It was some rain, calm down, okay? Okay, now, second off, yeah, like, actually, people were super helpful. Like, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a couple of examples. So, obviously, my shoes weren't like, you know, did nothing at this point, so I'm like, "Well, how do I get around?" And this person comes around and like, "The playa has figured it out, everyone's figured it out." What you do is you put Zip-Locks over your feet to protect your feet from like the water and the rain and whatever, and then you put socks over the Zip-Locks. So it's like, let's be real, I would have never discovered, but the socks give you traction, and also socks are pretty good at not having the clay like attached to it, like the fibers help somehow, I don't know. So, okay, so that was one. Another was this dude who was just like, I literally, he was just covered in mud, head

• 17:08Speaker 03

  to toe, and he would just come around, probably every hour or two, and just like knock on your shit pot or your RV, and I'd be like, "Yeah, what's up?" And he's like, "Just doing rounds, seeing what people need. Do you need food? Do you need anything?" And I'm like, "Like, who, like, who does that?" And so like, it was kind of cool just to watch the amount that like, people showed up, and I thought it was awesome.

• 17:27Casey Newton?

  Did you think about asking a guy for a latte just to see if he could produce one somehow?

• 17:31Speaker 03

  I did, I did ask him for Rice Krispie Treats, and no joke, he delivered. So I'm just telling you like-

• 17:35Casey Newton?

  That's amazing! Wow, that's amazing.

• 17:37Kevin Roose?

  Wow. So, you are at Burning Man on the playa when the rain starts, people are sort of reacting to it, some people are saying like, "Hey, let's go play in the mud," some people are starting to, you know, get freaked out. I know people who were very worried that they wouldn't be able to get back in time for work on, you know, Tuesday, or they had kids to pick up or something like that. So there were people who were nervous, and at some point, you decided that you needed to get out. So, walk us through your escape from Burning Man.

• 18:04Casey Newton?

  And try to tell it in like a really dramatic way that might lead to our podcast getting optioned for a movie.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right?

• 18:11Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, this is the sequel to Dunkirk.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  But okay, so, so look, first off, I was not like, oh my god, I need to get out of here. This is the apocalypse. I was more like, I'm bored. And I was like, I don't know what to do. Let's just see if we can like hike out of here, kind of thing. So what we did is we threw on our backpacks, this is me and my girlfriend. We like left the rest of our shit to our friends who had an RV and we're like, you'll, you'll deal with this. You're good people. And then we're like, okay, let's see if we can kind of make it out. So remember they had like shut down all of Burning Man, but like, eh, Burning Man's this like big, huge space. It's like actually hard to kind of like fully shut it down and secure it. So, so we just started walking with our ziplocks and socks. We walked what I think was like, I don't know, three or four miles. It took like, it took a couple hours. I mean, at some points you have no grip. You're just slipping and sliding. We uh-

• 18:58Casey Newton?

  And can I just ask, what, what notes is your girlfriend giving you at this point? Is she like, Adrian, this is the worst date you've ever taken me on? Like, was this her?

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Oh, no. She's like, she's like, let's go. She's, she's all about it. She's, come on, it's an adventure. Who's, so whatever. So we're, so we're kind of trudging out. As we are, we see like the main stretch where cars kind of drive out. And a couple of cars like tried to drive out and it was awesome. They're just getting ditched, they're getting stuck, and they're like-

• 19:25Casey Newton?

  Yeah, I saw a TikTok of like cars buried like three feet in mud and-

• 19:29Speaker 03

  Well, you gotta remember, even the people who had like their nice four-wheel drive, like huge ass pickups. Like, most of these people are like nerds. They don't actually know how to drive a pickup. So they're like, like gassing it so the wheels are spinning. I'm like, that's not what you should be doing right now, you know?

• 19:43Casey Newton?

  That's what I would do, yeah.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, right? Cause none of us actually know what we're doing. Um, we're, we're better behind keyboards, not behind wrenches, you know? And so, um, so anyway, so after, after, you know, miles and miles, we make it to, to the road or whatever. And we're like, okay, we're just gonna hitchhike. Until you realize, like, who the fuck's gonna pick you up when you are covered in mud? Like, and, and so now you have what is incredibly like a, a very adverse selection issue. Like, the person who wants to pick you up, you don't want to get in their car. So, so this dude comes by with a huge pickup and he's like, hop in. So we get in. He starts driving us to the closest town, Gerlach. And I'm a little like, okay, like, you know, who are you? What do you do? That sort of thing.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  And it turns out, he's a guy who like, works for Burning Man during the normal week. He's like, one of the contractors, I don't know, doing stuff. And he was like, it was my day off. I live in Gerlach. I don't really have much to do. I figured I'd come help out. And I'm like, oh, my God, you're like, the nicest human ever. Like, this is amazing. Yeah, so he takes us, he like, he wouldn't even leave before we like, filled up like, the bed of the car, like, had, I don't know, seven mud-covered people. So, he drives us to Gerlach. And then we're like, okay, awesome, we're in a town. So, we walk up, we see a bunch of our friends, friends from LA and New York were there, and we ran into them. And one of them, she's really nice, she walks up, she's like, oh, you guys need a ride?

• 21:07Speaker 03

  That woman in there, in that bar, go in there, and the woman in black and white, she's willing to give you a ride. So I'm like, okay, great. We walk up to her, and we're like, can we, can we get a ride? And she's, she, I swear on my life, this woman was more high than you could ever, like, she was like, okay, but I gotta clear out the, like, the bags of weed out of my van, which takes her 20 minutes, I don't know why. Um, and, I mean, it's getting to a point where like, I'm, I'm at this point, like, pretty willing to go with almost anybody. And like, I was even like, this doesn't seem like a good idea. I don't think you want her driving us. And then-

• 21:40Kevin Roose?

  She's actually the CTO of a, of a four billion dollar tech company.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, right? And so, this is where like, now the price gouging comes in, because now there's some commercializing folks. One guy walks up to us, he's like, I have that SUV right there. It's like a nice Escalade. He's like, do you guys need a ride? We're like, yeah, we need a ride. And he's like, five hundred dollars per person. And we only go if we fill the whole car. And I'm just looking, and I'm like, behind door number one is the person who's high as a kite and might kill you.

• 22:08Kevin Roose?

  The weed man.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  And behind door number two is like, the capitalist asshole. I'm like, jeez, like, I, how do I make this decision? Um, we chose the capitalist asshole, um, and, uh-

• 22:20Speaker 03

  I just wanted to live at that point.

• 22:22Casey Newton?

  And Adrian, you're an entrepreneur. Like, part of you must have respected the hustle of this man.

• 22:26Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, this man has actually been admitted to Y Combinator's next batch.

• 22:30Casey Newton?

  He just raised a seed round in that car, probably.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  I mean, he's like, he like, obviously discovered Uber surge pricing. But no, I went up to him and I was like, hey, you know, this is a pretty good business for you today. And he looks at me with like disdain and he's like, no. My business was delivering water on the ply and I was making 10,000 a day. I'm making less doing this. And he was like mad at us. And I was like, now you see like the dark capitalistic side behind all of this, you know, but, but anyway, so we get to, we get to Reno after a couple hours. And at this point, we've ditched our socks because they were caked in mud. So I'm like shorts, t-shirt, basically like all brown. And I walk into the casino and all I'm thinking is, you know, those signs that are like, no shoes, no shirt, no service? I'm like, please don't have one of those.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  Then again, it's Reno. It's not exactly like the highest class place you've ever been.

• 23:18Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, Ziploc bags actually count as shoes in Reno.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, right? So I, I shit you not, I go into the bathroom in, in the Reno casino and I'm like literally putting my feet up onto the sink and like, like trying to just get my feet clean. Then I was lucky enough that I like had this change of clothes with me. I changed and now we're like in the lobby. My girlfriend and I were clean and this is where this gets really great because I'm like, okay, I'm kind of hungry. And I see this like steak restaurant, this like fancy steak place. And I'm like, let's do it. They look us up and down. They're just like, what are you doing? And I'm like, table for two, please. And they're like, right this way, sir. So we, we have our great steak dinners. And then we're like, okay, well now we gotta, you know, get back to, to San Francisco.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  But this, at this point, like it's easy, right? You, some of our friends were like renting cars. Some of our friends were fancy and had their jets. Some of our friends were just like flying United and like, you know, at this point, it was like kind of, you know, everything from there was nice and simple.

• 24:19Kevin Roose?

  There was a lot of just people making fun of the, the sort of rich, you know, privileged techies and seen kids at Burning Man who got stuck in the mud. I don't really have a question about that, but I would like you to just respond to this allegation that this is just a bunch of privileged people who aren't good at checking weather reports, sort of getting their comeuppance.

• 24:41Casey Newton?

  Well, or is there something in this sort of idea, this sort of utopian spirit that you feel like is brought back to Silicon Valley that sort of filters into, I don't know, products and services and ideas?

• 24:52Speaker 03

  I mean, all of the above, right? Yes, it's ridiculous. It's a bunch of people with too much money going to the desert, getting naked and getting high. Like, yes, of course, that's ridiculous. But like, whatever, life, you're supposed to have fun in life, and this is a way of having fun. If the most hate you can give is like, "Look at those assholes having fun", well, like, look, you're probably an unhappy person. Go see your therapist, you know? Like, on the other hand, like, everybody needs their environment to which they can become creative. For you, it could be just like meditating in the corner. It could be hanging with certain friends. It could be doing drugs. It could be being on the playa, whatever it is. But what it allows you to do is it allows you to kind of, you know, do the traditional thinking outside the box in a way that you otherwise wouldn't do. And what comes of that really does come into society.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  You see it in people's artwork. Every part of what we do in our lives came from somebody having inspiration, somebody having creativity. And once you have that realization that somebody else, just like you and me, created it, ergo, it is not written in stone, I think that opens up an enormous amount of possibilities.

• 25:53Kevin Roose?

  All right, Adrienne, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it and glad you made it back safely.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me on. This was fun.

• 26:04Casey Newton?

  When we come back, it's Elon Musk versus the Anti-Defamation League.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure, and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner. Dell, AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

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• 27:42Speaker 05

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• 28:15Casey Newton?

  Well, Kevin, I think it's time once again to talk about Elon Musk.

• 28:20Kevin Roose?

  Yes.

• 28:20Casey Newton?

  So he had a pretty intense weekend.

• 28:24Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, I would not describe it as a Labor Day weekend where he was kicking back with his buds, you know, drinking a couple White Claws and taking a load off.

• 28:30Casey Newton?

  No, and I would say, actually, this summer, there have been a number of weekends where he has made some pretty intense or offensive posts. You remember there was that whole era where he was pretending like he was going to fight Mark Zuckerberg. This weekend, he picked another fight, and it was with the Anti-Defamation League.

• 28:50Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, and this is actually like kind of a meaningful fight, unlike the sort of cage match Kabuki theater of it all, because this is about money, it's about content moderation, it's about hate speech, and it really touches on some of the core issues with X, the company formerly known as Twitter.

• 29:08Casey Newton?

  Yeah, and we have already on this show spent plenty of time talking about moves that Elon has made that we think are bad, and I didn't want to do another segment where we just did that again, but about another subject. But at the same time, as you point out, there's a lot of really meaningful issues in this story, and we had an opportunity to talk to one of the principals involved in the whole thing.

• 29:29Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, so we are going to talk today to Jonathan Greenblatt, who's the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, which is a prominent Jewish civil rights group and has been one of the groups that has been putting pressure on not just X slash Twitter, but other social media platforms to clean up hate speech on their platforms. Last fall, when Elon Musk took over the company that was then known as Twitter, the ADL was vocal about his decision to reinstate Donald Trump, to sort of take a light touch with people like Kanye West, who were posting anti-Semitic content.

• 30:02Casey Newton?

  And not just take a light touch, but actually bring him back onto the platform after he was banned, which he did with a number of other folks who had been spreading hate speech.

• 30:10Kevin Roose?

  Right. So the ADL was not happy about this, nor were other civil rights groups, and they responded by doing what they have always done in these cases, which is to report hate speech on the platform, to try to kind of bring some quantitative data to this feeling or this worry. That Twitter was becoming a more hateful place. And in December, they joined with the Center for Countering Digital Hate and other groups to sort of provide some data about how hate speech had changed on Twitter since Elon Musk took over. According to their findings at the time, anti-Semitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61% in the two weeks after Elon Musk acquired Twitter. Slurs against gay men and Black Americans also rose, according to them.

• 30:55Casey Newton?

  Yeah, in fact, I read here that slurs against gay men rose from 2,506 times a day before Musk to 3,964 times a day after. And 3,964 gay slurs a day is actually what I heard in middle school. So, anyway, it's bad, okay?

• 31:11Kevin Roose?

  It's not good.

• 31:11Casey Newton?

  It's not good.

• 31:12Kevin Roose?

  And so the ADL calls this out. They are, you know, putting out this data. And they are also doing something that they've done in other cases, which is to ask advertisers to pause their spending on the platform in order to apply pressure to Twitter and Twitter's executives to clean up their platform.

• 31:28Casey Newton?

  Yeah, they've sort of said to advertisers, like, you know, you guys are worried about your, your brand, right? Like, you probably don't want to run it next to an ad that has a Nazi slogan on it. And this apparently has been pretty effective. We know that advertising on Twitter has dropped by around 60%, or at least that is what Elon Musk has said. So, the platform is struggling, and I think Elon has found a scapegoat in the Anti-Defamation League.

• 31:50Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. So, let's just recap this past weekend's conflict and just sort of set the scene for this conversation a little bit. So, last week, Elon Musk starts engaging with these posts on X about this hashtag campaign called #bantheadl. And this hashtag campaign was being shared by, among other people, some of the worst, sort of most virulent antisemites on the internet. People with known reputations and associations with hate groups.

• 32:21Casey Newton?

  Yeah, people whose full-time job is just like posting hate videos on YouTube Alternatives.

• 32:25Kevin Roose?

  Exactly. And so, on Monday, he posted that, quote, "To clear our platform's name on the matter of antisemitism, it looks like we have no choice but to..." A defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League. Oh, the irony. He also posted that X's US advertising revenue is still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers, he said, by the ADL and other groups. And he suggested that the ADL could be responsible for destroying as much as half the value of the company that he purchased, or about $22 billion. So, Casey, what did you make of this?

• 32:59Casey Newton?

  Well, I think it is rich to welcome a bunch of far-right influencers back onto the platform, watch advertisers flee, and then blame the group who pointed that out to them, right? I think that there were any number of things that Elon Musk could have done to prevent these advertisers from fleeing, and so to try to lay it all at the feet of the organization who was just kind of pointing it out and counting up the instances of anti-Semitic speech on the platform is really, really silly. But I think that there is something more interesting here, which is that before some of these events that you laid out, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, met with Linda Iaccarino. Linda Iaccarino is, of course, the CEO of X.

• 33:39Casey Newton?

  She was brought in specifically to fix the relationship between advertisers and the platform, and I guess it's fair to say that that's not going great, right? But so the reason I wanted to have this conversation with Jonathan is I wanted to know, what was that conversation like with Linda Iaccarino? What did she tell you? What promises did she make? Does it seem like she had any influence over the platform? And what happened in between what seemed like a pretty productive conversation and Elon Musk losing his mind on X?

• 34:11Kevin Roose?

  Right, and so I think it's a really interesting moment to talk to Jonathan Greenblatt from the ADL, because this is a group that has spent years trying to clean up the worst parts of social media, the most hateful speech that happens on the internet, and they have largely been supported in that by social media platforms. And this is really the first time that a major social media platform have said, you know what, actually, we don't want your help, and furthermore, we're going to sue you because you're destroying our business.

• 34:38Casey Newton?

  Yeah, so let's go inside this conflict and talk to Jonathan.

• 34:42Kevin Roose?

  Jonathan, thanks for coming on Hard Fork. Happy to be here. So, just to start, can you just tell us where you were and what you were doing when you learned that Elon Musk was threatening to sue the ADL? Were you at a Labor Day barbecue or something like that?

• 34:56Speaker 06

  I mean, this whole thing really blew up over Shabat. The ban, the ADL hashtag, the claims. And so I really got keyed into this on late Saturday night.

• 35:08Kevin Roose?

  Did it surprise you? I mean, this has been a conflict that has been brewing for many months with Elon Musk over the issue of antisemitism and hate speech.

• 35:19Speaker 06

  I wouldn't, yeah, I wouldn't characterize it like that, Kevin. I mean, I've been in touch with Elon about this. I'd had a good meeting with Linda last week. So, no, like this, this was not something I would have expected, and I certainly wouldn't have characterized our relationship as individuals or at an institutional level as, quote, in conflict or anything of the sort.

• 35:39Casey Newton?

  But is it fair to say that after Elon took over, you grew increasingly concerned about what you were seeing on the platform?

• 35:45Speaker 06

  Well, let's, let's step back for a moment, Casey. So, number one, like Twitter was a hellscape before. I mean, it was a very problematic platform. I had, you know, deep issues with the previous management, if you will. Look, I was optimistic after Elon took over. I mean, he is a gifted entrepreneur on many levels, and he solved some huge problems. Having an open dialogue with him led me to believe that he was committed on these issues, too. Unfortunately, we continue to see, based on our analyses, based on our studies, a persistent problem that has actually intensified in certain ways in recent months.

• 36:27Speaker 06

  That was really epitomized by this ban the ADL campaign.

• 36:31Kevin Roose?

  You tweeted last week that you had had a, quote, "very frank and productive" conversation with Linda Iaccarino, the CEO of X. What can you tell us about that meeting?

• 36:44Speaker 06

  Well, so Elon had given me her coordinates after she started. We both came at the meeting with, I think, a very open approach.

• 36:55Speaker 06

  And so we had a very productive conversation. We talked a little bit about what we think's working or not working. And the intent was to continue to find ways to collaborate. I mean, look, ADL was part of Twitter's Trust and Safety Council when there was such a thing. We were a trusted flagger and regularly in touch with the team when they had that service. I believe we have to work with them. Whether you like it or don't like it, the fact of the matter is they're here. And as I think I've also talked to you about in the past, like, I think that hate speech is the price of free speech. The question becomes, what voices do you choose to sort of validate or not? I think these are questions that all social media companies have to grapple with.

• 37:37Kevin Roose?

  So what were you asking Lynda to do? And what was your sense of her ability to deliver on that?

• 37:43Speaker 06

  I don't think I asked her to do anything specific, Casey.

• 37:47Kevin Roose?

  Why not?

• 37:48Speaker 06

  It was the first time I'd ever met her before. It was a brief, it was only a half an hour meeting. Um, we were getting to know one another. So, believe me, no one would say that I'm some shrinking violet and don't ask for things and don't push on the issues I care about. But the intent of that conversation was to connect for the first time and to agree to work together.

• 38:09Kevin Roose?

  So you have this meeting with Lynda Ocarino last week. And then Elon Musk starts liking posts about hashtag ban the ADL and interacting with known members of hate groups and associates of hate groups. And then starts this threat of a lawsuit. What do you think happened in the interim between when you met with Lynda Ocarino and when Elon Musk started going after you?

• 38:33Speaker 06

  The truth is, I really don't know. But, but like, let me be clear. When I say I don't know what happened, I don't know what happened to prompt the things that were being directed at us. But I do know what happened, literally, which is after the meeting, a white supremacist. I don't want to mention people's names and give them credit. But a particular nasty white supremacist started this hashtag ban the ADL, which a guy, gentleman, but I guess I will mention some names, gentleman named Nick Fuentes picked up and started pushing, and he was doing that over on Telegram, but it was jumped

• 39:11Speaker 06

  and reinforced by a series of extreme right-wing personalities on X, and it spread like fire. And it was a trending topic, again, I think on Saturday. When I say it was a trending topic, to clarify, it's not just that hashtag ban the ADL was trending, it was the tweets that people were sending out around it. I mean, literally appalling content.

• 39:35Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 06

  And so that's what really struck me when I logged in and saw all this, was how toxic it really was.

• 39:43Kevin Roose?

  So Jonathan, what do you make of Elon's criticisms of the ADL? He has said that the ADL has been trying to, quote, "kill this platform by falsely accusing it and me of being anti-Semitic." He has also said that the ADL is responsible for putting pressure on advertisers that led to a 60% drop in the US advertising revenue of the company. And he has said that he thinks that the company has no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit for possibly as much as half of the value of the company, or about $22 billion. What's your response to that?

• 40:18Speaker 06

  Well, I would just break down these claims one by one. So to the question of that we have described Elon Musk or the platform is anti-Semitic, that's false. So it is certainly true that engaging with certain personalities who espouse anti-Semitism, racism, that can amplify them because of the breadth of Elon's reach. But to the claim that we are called him an anti-Semite, we haven't said that, nor do I think that platform is, or any platform, is anti-Semitic. It's the content that flows on it that can be very problematic. So that's number one. Then the second claim was that we're pressuring advertisers. It is certainly

• 41:01Speaker 06

  true that we called for a pause, ADL and many other organizations, back in November, shortly after Elon purchased the platform, because of changes that were made. But beyond that, us signing on with other groups. I mean, that's all we've done. And the last thing I would say is this claim that we're trying to kill Twitter, or whatever you read, Kevin, I don't know the exact language there, but that's just not true. I mean, we've never said anything to suggest that in the past. At the end of the day, advertisers, they're going to do what it is that they do. Now, for what it's worth, the idea that the wealthiest man in the world running the most powerful

• 41:43Speaker 06

  media platforms on the planet is somehow subject to the whims of, relatively speaking, a small nonprofit in New York, I mean, give me a break. What I would say, though, what's worrisome is that this claim, he may believe this to be true, but this plays into tropes of, guess what, antisemitism, that the Jews somehow are working behind the scenes to control things and manipulate things. Like, we're not doing that. And I'd be happy to have an open conversation with Elon on a public platform and talk about it the way I'm doing with you right now, because it's just not true.

• 42:26Casey Newton?

  I've basically written X off as far as content moderation is concerned. I don't think that Elon Musk shares the same values I do with with regard to sort of keeping a platform safe. But you guys haven't written it off. You are still fighting this fight. So why is this fight worth fighting to you?

• 42:42Speaker 06

  I'm so glad you asked the question, Casey. This is kind of in many ways, as they say, like, the real question.

• 42:48Casey Newton?

  Yeah.

• 42:49Speaker 06

  Here's the story. If you think about the operating environment we're in right now, today, America, September 2023, antisemitic incidents that the ADL has been tracking for decades and decades have reached an all time high, at least since we started doing this work about 45 years ago. That means acts of harassment, vandalism, and violence. We have seen a wave of propaganda distributions, like flyers and signage and stickers. We've seen, just this past weekend, in Florida, neo-Nazis marching openly. We've had a series, like dozens of swaddings and bomb threats of synagogues and Jewish institutions. So

• 43:34Speaker 06

  a lot of this doesn't make the front page of the newspaper, if you will. A lot of this you don't read about in the front section of the New York Times. But this is happening every day. And so there is a moment right now where Jewish people are feeling incredibly on edge and being reminded of their vulnerability as we see this sort of antisemitism normalized. So in that environment, when again, one of the most active and visible social media platforms on earth starts circulating these things, I can't afford to ignore it.

• 44:11Kevin Roose?

  John, the last question before we let you go. What's next for the ADL in this story? Are you worried that this may go to court, this threatened lawsuit? Do you think it will actually materialize? And do you think there's hope of a reconciliation or a sort of de-escalation with Elon Musk and with X?

• 44:30Speaker 06

  I'll tell you what, I don't know what I do know, Kevin. Here's what I don't know. Is it going to go to court or not? I don't know. Is he or someone else going to proceed with some kind of frivolous lawsuit? I don't know. But here's what I do know. Number one, we continue to remain open to working with the platform, as was true last week, as is true today. A safer, healthier, less toxic X is better for the Jewish community. It's better for advertisers. It's better for its users, I would say, in the world. I think, number two, the Jewish holidays are coming up. And so our community is on edge.

• 45:10Speaker 06

  And so I will not hesitate and I will not be daunted by kind of claims or threats. And we will remain ferociously focused on protecting our community. Period. End of story. Like, I am not intimidated by anybody and certainly not this situation. And then, number three, like, the fact of the matter is, we are better and we are stronger when we're together. So ADIA will continue to work with all the different actors, you know, in Silicon Valley where we can, other civil rights groups when we can, elected officials when we can. Like, it's not about politics. It's about keeping people safe. That remains our number one priority.

• 45:51Kevin Roose?

  All right. That's a great note, Tan Don. Thank you so much, Jonathan. Really great to have you on.

• 45:55Speaker 06

  Thanks, Jonathan. Thanks a lot. I appreciate the time.

• 46:02Casey Newton?

  After our interview with Jonathan, we reached out to X for comment. They did not respond, but on August 30th, Linda Iaccarino wrote that, "A strong and productive partnership is built on good intentions and candor. Thank you, Jonathan." That was on X about their conversation.

• 46:20Kevin Roose?

  After the break, we answer your questions about all things tech and AI.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure, and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner, Dell, AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

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  AI spend is growing fast, but most businesses still can't see exactly where that money is going. Ramp gives businesses visibility and control across AI providers with real-time guardrails by team and model, helping ensure spend goes to the highest ROI areas. Stop guessing where your AI spend is going. Get started with Ramp. And if you're new to Ramp, you can get $250 off at ramp.com/hardfork. Go to ramp.com/hardfork. Ramp.com/hardfork.

• 48:19Kevin Roose?

  All right, Casey. Last week, we asked for people's listener questions. And boy, did we get some good ones.

• 48:26Casey Newton?

  We did. You know, we always love hearing what is on our listeners' minds because it gives us some interesting new territory to explore.

• 48:32Kevin Roose?

  Whenever I hear from our listeners and their great questions, I'm like amazed that they listen to our dumb podcast. Do you ever get this thing where you're like, you're a PhD in molecular biology? Don't like, shouldn't you be listening to podcasts by like, smart people?

• 48:45Casey Newton?

  Absolutely not. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Hard Fork is the only good podcast. It surprises me when people don't listen to Hard Fork. I think, do you not care about the future? Is the future not relevant to your life?

• 48:54Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, you'd rather solve a cold case from 1964? Come on. Okay. Casey, let's answer some listener questions. We got a bunch of great listener questions, some of which were sort of in the vein of our hard questions segment of sort of ethical and moral dilemmas about technology. And some of which were just people asking, hey, what's up with this thing?

• 49:15Casey Newton?

  That's right. And we want to, by the way, answer more of your moral dilemmas, but I think we need to be more specific about what we're asking for. Because basically, the only moral dilemma that listeners have asked us about is some variant of, is it okay to use ChatGPT for this?

• 49:28Kevin Roose?

  Correct.

• 49:28Casey Newton?

  Which is a good question.

• 49:29Kevin Roose?

  Great question.

• 49:29Casey Newton?

  We just want to hear other tech-related questions.

• 49:31Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, so if something has happened to you in your life, or with an interaction with a friend over technology, something that you've been really wrestling with personally.

• 49:40Casey Newton?

  Is Instagram ruining your college experience in some way?

• 49:45Kevin Roose?

  Is it ethical to get a private helicopter to illegally ferry you out of a festival in the desert? I mean, these are the kinds of tech dilemmas that we're interested in answering. So please, send us more of your questions. Ethical and moral dilemmas are especially appreciated.

• 49:59Casey Newton?

  Yeah, but in the meantime, we did get some truly interesting questions.

• 50:02Kevin Roose?

  Totally. So this first question is from someone that I think we both can agree is a great person and just a sort of fixture of the internet.

• 50:09Casey Newton?

  This is one of the only people that became famous on the internet, and it somehow made him a better person.

• 50:15Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, so this is from Hank Green, who is a well-known YouTuber and content creator and sort of, I would say like an OG creator.

• 50:23Casey Newton?

  Yeah, and we're both big fans of his and want to send Hank well wishes because he has been recovering from chemo and it seems like things are going well for him, but Hank has had a rough year and so we were delighted to hear that he's even listening to our podcast.

• 50:35Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, real pinch me moment when I realized Hank Green is listening to Hard Fork. Hank, very glad to get your question and let's play a clip of it.

• 50:44Speaker 07

  Hello Kevin and Casey, it's Hank. So I'd stumbled across a TikTok the other day that was like, I'm making my entirely AI-generated YouTube channel, which is something that I think we've all been thinking is about to happen. He was like, I picked a topic. It's dating advice. And then he got a branding AI to name it and to do the logo and then AI is doing the scripts, AI is performing the videos, AI is making the images and video that go along with it. And right now, I think all this is pretty clumsy, but I feel like in a couple of years, like YouTube's gonna have a big discovery problem on its hands, where there's just so much BS getting uploaded to the platform. And like, how does anything ever get discovered in a world of infinite BS? I don't know. Like, how do you, how do

• 51:25Speaker 07

  you give enough human eyeballs to it to get a signal that's useful about whether that content is good or not? It seems like it's gonna create a little bit of a discovery apocalypse and I wonder if you two have any thoughts about that.

• 51:37Kevin Roose?

  So this is a really interesting question. I actually tried an AI video making app a few weeks ago. Some company had built this thing that supposedly helps you make TikToks that are all sort of generated, the scripts are generated by AI and all the sort of background graphics are chosen by AI. And it sort of automates the process of making TikTok videos. And I, you know, I tested this out because I was curious. I'm not a big TikToker, but I would love to be one day. And I thought maybe I could do this with very little effort. And so I went on and I, I picked a blockchain video. It was gonna help me make a video about the blockchain.

• 52:12Casey Newton?

  Wait, why was this? Have you ever seen TikTok? This is what you thought was gonna go viral on TikTok?

• 52:18Kevin Roose?

  Well, I don't know how to dance. So this was all I had. So I, I tried this thing out and it was terrible. It pulled basically like a tech Article about some blockchain thing that had happened. It turned it into a little script. And, you know, I was supposed to basically stand in front of the green screen and read this thing and it would turn it into a video.

• 52:35Casey Newton?

  So pretty, pretty low effort content.

• 52:37Kevin Roose?

  Yes, but as Hank points out, there is a lot of low effort content out there. Some of it is very successful and this is not necessarily a barrier to adoption. So my prediction for YouTube specifically is that it will remain dominated by humans and that we will actually not have a major problem with discovering YouTube videos. I mean, just already as it stands, there is way more video being uploaded to YouTube than any human being could watch in his or her lifetime.

• 53:08Casey Newton?

  Yeah.

• 53:09Kevin Roose?

  Most of that will never be seen by more than, you know, a handful of people. But they do have this recommendation algorithm and the recommendation algorithm obviously is not perfect. But what it does do very well is sort of direct people to the videos that are actually worth watching in that huge set of videos. And so I don't think YouTube will have much of a problem being sort of overrun with AI generated video because frankly, most of it won't be very good. And if it is good, then maybe it's something that people would want to watch anyway. So I don't know. Do you think this is going to be a big issue? Do you think we're headed toward a discovery apocalypse?

• 53:41Casey Newton?

  I think I disagree with you a bit in the sense that I do think AI generated videos are eventually going to replace some of the kinds of content that you see on YouTube today. I'm thinking of how to content, for example. We can already get chat GPT to write a perfectly serviceable article about how to change a tire or how to make an omelet. I don't think it's going to be that long before we can auto generate the images that would go along with that, right? And so I can imagine a company in the future whose sole job is creating how to content and other sort of evergreen videos and flooding YouTube with them. And over time, it will become harder for humans who might have been making that before to get it seen. At the same time, I agree with you.

• 54:26Casey Newton?

  I think that if you're somebody like Hank and a lot of the, the value that you provide is just sort of letting people be around you and your personality. AI isn't going to change that.

• 54:36Kevin Roose?

  Absolutely. And I think where this may actually become a problem for YouTube is less in the discovery piece, because they already have algorithms for that, than actually storage. I mean, we don't think about YouTube as being a place with limited storage because, you know, you can basically upload as much video as you want, but all that has a cost, right, to Google. And if you actually take the amount of content that's being uploaded, because there's all this AI content flooding in, they might actually have to cap it at some point and say, you know, there's a maximum amount of video you can upload.

• 55:07Casey Newton?

  That is sort of cra- you sort of wonder, how far ahead does YouTube stay of like, content demand? Like, is there somebody that has to go out and buy new hard drives like once a week? Like, how does that work?

• 55:17Kevin Roose?

  It's like, Mr. Beast has got a new one coming. Build the server rack, Jimmy. So, I do think there will be sort of a storage problem. And I actually think that YouTube, like a lot of social media platforms, will attempt in the next few years to do some kind of human verification. There will be some sort of indicator that you can get by, you know, proving that you are a human in some way, that will sort of set your content apart from all the AI-generated stuff.

• 55:44Casey Newton?

  And do you think Ben Shapiro will be able to pass that test?

• 55:47Kevin Roose?

  I think it will probably involve looking into an orb, frankly. And I look forward to that. Okay.

• 55:52Casey Newton?

  Hank, great question.

• 55:53Kevin Roose?

  Hank, thank you.

• 55:53Casey Newton?

  If AI destroys your business, get in touch. We'd love to have you on.

• 55:56Kevin Roose?

  All right. Next question. So this came from a listener named Diana Dionisio. And she has what I would say is like, one of the creepier stories of something happening with AI on social media. So recently, Diana was on vacation in Tokyo. She was in her hotel room, and she was watching TV. And one of the shows that came on TV was some version of like, an Antiques Roadshow, but the Japanese version. And she works in TV. So she took a picture of the TV in her hotel room, and she sent it to some of her family members

• 56:36Kevin Roose?

  on Snapchat. And shortly thereafter, she got a message. This message was from MyAI, the built-in AI chatbot that comes in every user's Snapchat.

• 56:50Kevin Roose?

  And the message said the following. Wow, that TV in the corner with writing looks interesting. What does it say?

• 56:57Casey Newton?

  Hmm.

• 56:58Kevin Roose?

  So Diana's Snapchat My AI had essentially recognized the snap that she had sent and asked her a follow-up question about it. And she was very creeped out by that. She said, you know, I didn't engage with this. This was unsolicited. And why is this showing up on my phone? Casey, have you heard about people having weird encounters with Snapchat's AI chatbot?

• 57:20Casey Newton?

  There have been some weird encounters. Last month, this feature My AI hosted two Snapchat Stories. So it posted its own story to the app and apparently stopped responding to users' messages for a little while. But look, here's what I'm going to say. And I could be wrong about this, but when I have been sending snaps to people, sometimes it will autocomplete something you're typing to My AI. And the reason it's doing that is it wants to encourage you to loop the AI in on the conversations that you're having so that it can help you out with things. It can say, oh, looks like you guys are hungry. Here's a restaurant in the neighborhood or something like that. So if I were this person, the first thing I would go back was is to look and see, did

• 58:04Casey Newton?

  I accidentally tag the AI? Because I think that is what would explain this. You know, earlier this year, Snapchat rolled out a feature where if you send the AI an image, it will respond to you in a fashion not unlike what Diana is describing here. So the question is, did she somehow tag the AI on accident, I think?

• 58:23Kevin Roose?

  Right. And I actually asked Snap about this specific incident, and they said that My AI will not send unsolicited messages about snaps that you send to your friends unless you tag the chatbot in the message. So it seems like your theory might be correct, Casey. And I went back and asked Diana if it was possible that she had accidentally tagged My AI when she was sending a photo of her TV. And she said that it was.

• 58:49Casey Newton?

  But you know, here's the last thing I'd say about this. The Snapchat logo is a ghost. Ghosts are famously invisible and they haunt people. So has some of that DNA gotten into their AI? I wouldn't be surprised.

• 58:59Kevin Roose?

  Who can say?

• 59:00Casey Newton?

  Who can say?

• 59:00Kevin Roose?

  All right, next question. It comes from a listener named Jay Hepler, and it's about our thoughts on home surveillance and kids. Jay started off by sort of talking about the huge number of home surveillance technologies that now exist. You know, things like internet-connected doorbells and indoor cameras and, you know, Alexa devices and stuff like that. And their question is basically, is this stuff bad for kids? They write, "Is there any understanding on how home surveillance might affect a child's upbringing, relationship with their parents, or trust issues? I'd be mortified if my mother had heard some conversations my sister and I had in common spaces of the home growing up. I don't know if I would have felt safe,

• 59:44Kevin Roose?

  knowing my every action is recorded." Casey, what do you think of this?

• 59:48Casey Newton?

  Yes, I mean, I think I'm basically on Jay's side here. I think that in some ways, this isn't a particularly new issue, right? Like, the nanny cam has been around for a really long time. And certainly, I think the younger your child, the more justification you have for putting these cameras in your house. But I'm somebody who worries about surveillance, generally curtailing our freedoms over time. And I think that if it gets normalized as like, every room in my house has a camera and microphone in it, that just leads us further down that path. And by the way, if you're taking a lot of video inside your house, like, don't be surprised if the police want to look at it at some point in ways that might make you uncomfortable. So, yeah, I'm nervous.

• 1:00:30Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, I do think this is a question that I think a lot about as a parent. You know, my kid is still young enough where, you know, he doesn't have a real opinion about, you know, the camera that's in his room, pointed at his crib so we can keep tabs on it from the other room. But I do think that creating a sense of trust in the home is a very important thing for parents. We know that that's correlated with good relationships between parents and their children. I also think that young people are just not as bothered by being surveilled as older people. Really? Yeah, there's some really interesting research out there, including a recent survey by the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank, which is actually not about

• 1:01:12Kevin Roose?

  home surveillance. It was about central bank digital currencies and people's views on that. But they asked people a bunch of questions about various privacy invasive things and how they felt about that. One of which was, would you favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activities? Casey, what percentage of people younger than 30 do you think said that they would support the government installing surveillance cameras in every household? I'm really gonna hope it was under 20%. 29%. So that was much higher than other age groups who answered that question. And I think it just makes me a little bit confused about what young people believe about surveillance technology. What Jay is asking about is not government-installed

• 1:01:57Kevin Roose?

  cameras in every home. That's a much more extreme step. It's just saying, would you feel weird if your parents had one of these? So I just think I don't know enough about how young people today view surveillance in their lives, and whether it's something that feels like an imposition, or a lack of trust from their parents, or whether it's actually something that makes them feel safe. I mean, something that you also hear kids say is that they like that they have cellphones because their parents can keep track of them and they don't have to be constantly checking in or calling them. They can just pull up the location tracker and see, oh, they're at school, or they're at soccer practice, or what have you. All right, very interesting. All right, last question. This one comes from listener Holly Godfrey. She is

• 1:02:39Kevin Roose?

  a teacher librarian, and she says that part of her role is just kind of teaching educators and students about AI. And then her question is, quote, "What does someone like me, an ordinary, unconnected, non-influencer, un-powerful individual, do about the fact that I have strong opinions about desperately wanting tech companies to be responsible and ethical in how AI is developed and used? Is it really just about writing to my local member of Congress, or is there anything else that might actually make a positive difference?" Casey, what do you think?

• 1:03:13Casey Newton?

  Well, I mean, the first thing I would say is that Holly probably has influence at her school and in her school district, right? You go to the school board meeting, or you write a letter, you write an email. Maybe if you have some fellow teachers who share your views, you guys all get together and you lobby together. So I would sort of start local, because I think you'll probably have a greater influence there. But there are also opportunities to influence things at the federal level. I was reading a week or so ago that the US Copyright Office wants to hear what people think about AI and copyright. So this is something we've been talking about a lot, right? If you take 100,000 books and you put them in a blender and slurp them up into a large language model, is that a violation of copyright or not? It's not a settled legal question.

• 1:03:57Casey Newton?

  And so if Holly has an opinion about that, that is something where she could go right now and sort of share her thoughts with the US Copyright Office. And I think that's a great thing to do, right? That's kind of what our democracy rests on, is average people sharing their voices, and there are some opportunities to do that right now.

• 1:04:12Kevin Roose?

  Totally. And I would also say that sharing your voice can also happen with the companies that are developing this software. I mean, we've seen that these companies that are making large language models, they don't totally understand the effects that their creations are going to have downstream for teachers, for doctors, for journalists. They are learning about this stuff as they go, which is a little terrifying, but also means that users, people like Holly, have an opportunity to chime in and to say, hey, this is really screwing up things in my school in this particular way. And I've found that actually, when you reach out to some of these companies, whether it's

• 1:04:51Kevin Roose?

  on Twitter, or in our capacity as reporters, they are actually worried about how their technologies are spilling out into the world. And this kind of feedback is very valuable. I was just on a podcast with Kevin Scott, the Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft.

• 1:05:08Casey Newton?

  Wait, you have another podcast?

• 1:05:10Kevin Roose?

  This was his podcast.

• 1:05:12Casey Newton?

  This is how I'm finding out?

• 1:05:13Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. There are too many podcasts hosted by Kevins. So I was on Kevin Scott's podcast and he, we were talking about this debacle with Bing that happened earlier this year. And he said that, in his view, feedback is a gift because it means that people are using the thing that you've built and they care enough to try to help you make it better. And so I don't know that that's the view that every AI company executive has, but I know that a lot of them are actually receptive to feedback from users.

• 1:05:42Casey Newton?

  But feedback is a gift, is what I say to myself whenever somebody insults my work. I say, Casey, remember, feedback is a gift. That's true. You know, the last thing I would say to Holly is, these companies are paying very close attention to how their work is discussed. Like, we hear this all the time, that, you know, I mean, particularly the communications departments, which is what you'd expect, but executives too, they know they are out on a limb with this stuff and they're extremely curious how it's being received in the real world. So don't be afraid to let them know.

• 1:06:12Kevin Roose?

  Yep. And as I've always said, shame is the most effective regulator. So if you do feel like these tech companies are going in directions that you're concerned about, you know, be nice, be civil, but give them a piece of your mind.

• 1:06:24Casey Newton?

  Because feedback is a gift. It's true.

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure, and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner. Dell, AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

• 1:07:09Speaker 04

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• 1:08:19Speaker 04

  Hard Fork is produced by Davis Land and Rachel Cohn. We're edited by Jen Poyant. This episode was fact-checked by Caitlin Love. Today's show was engineered by Chris Wood. Original music by Dan Powell, Alicia Baty-Tup, and Marian Lozano. Special thanks to Paula Schuman, Puywing Tam, Nell Galogly, Kate LaPreste, Jeffrey Miranda, and Sparkle Pony from The Playa. Pulled me out of a very troublesome situation. As always, you can email us at [email protected].

• 1:08:49Casey Newton?

  And if you're home from Burning Man, just let us know you're safe. We just want to know that you're OK.

• 1:09:39Speaker 05

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