Nintendo's Switch 2 is here — sort of

David Pierce and Richard Lawler are joined by The Verge's Ash Parrish and Andrew Webster to talk about the Nintendo Switch 2 launch — all the things we know, and all the things we don't. (There's a lot of both.) Then The Verge's Adi Robertson joins to talk about the latest machinations in the potential TikTok ban, plus a Supreme Court hearing about adult content that might just be about the future of the internet. Finally, in the lightning round, David and Richard talk about Patrick Spence leaving Sonos, the Blue Origin launch, Drake's latest beef with Kendrick Lamar, and more. Further reading: Nintendo Switch 2 announcement: all the news on the next console The Nintendo Switch 2 has officially been announced Everything we know about the Switch 2’s Joy-Con controllers You’ll be able to try out the Switch 2 starting in April Nintendo announces Switch 2 Direct for April The Nintendo Switch 2 supports original Switch cartridges Nintendo teases a new Mario Kart for the Switch 2 The Switch 2 is boring — and that’s exactly what Nintendo needs The Switch 2’s bigger screen is just what I wanted TikTok reportedly plans ‘immediate’ Sunday shutdown in the US if it’s banned TikTok ban: Sen. Markey tries to give a 270 day extension TikTok says it’s planning for ‘various scenarios’ ahead of possible US ban Elon Musk is reportedly trying to save TikTok Donald Trump is reportedly considering an executive order to delay the TikTok ban. Duolingo is the real winner in the TikTok ban. RedNote: what it’s like using the Chinese app TikTokers are flocking to What is RedNote? The Chinese app gaining popularity as TikTok ban approaches The Supreme Court could decide the fate of Pornhub — and the rest of the internet Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch Sonos’ interim CEO hits all the right notes in first letter to employees Sonos’ chief product officer is leaving the company The iPhone Air could be coming later this year Bezos’ Blue Origin successfully launches SpaceX rival Super Bowl LIX will stream for free on Tubi Drake sues his label, UMG, saying ‘Not Like Us’ is defamatory Drake axes ‘Not Like Us’ diss track petition against UMG and Spotify FTC sues John Deere for ‘unfairly’ raising repair costs on farm equipment Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. 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.

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• 1:29David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of additional USB ports. I'm your friend David Pierce. Neelai Patel is doing some fancy journalism thing today that I don't totally understand, so he's not here. Richard Lawler's here. Hi, Richard. Hey, how you doing? We do not do fancy journalism things here. That's Neelai's job. We're just here to talk about Nintendo. Ash Parrish is here. Hi, Ash.

• 1:50Speaker 05

  Hi.

• 1:51David Pierce?

  And Andrew Webster is here. Hi, Andrew. Hello. Andrew, true or false, the last time you were on camera was the last time there was a Nintendo Switch? That is correct. 2017, in New York. How does it feel to be back? I'm here.

• 2:06David Pierce?

  I'll take it. So there's a lot of stuff to talk about today. The TikTok ban either is or is not going to happen. And literally, no one knows and everybody changes their mind every five minutes. There's a bunch of Sonos news, a whole bunch of policy and politics stuff happening as the Biden administration comes to a close and the Trump administration comes to a start. But we have to start with the Nintendo Switch, which after, I don't know, months, Andrew, of you sort of waking up every morning, wondering if that today was going to be the day that the Switch 2 came out. Finally exists, ish, kind of.

• 2:42David Pierce?

  Andrew, just explain what we know and learned about the Switch today.

• 2:45Speaker 06

  I mean, pretty much what you said, it exists. We have a three minute video that shows it's a real thing and a press release that tells us that it's a real thing, but we know nothing else. It's bigger. They won't say what size the screen is. The Joy-Con are slightly different. How? I don't know. They attach differently. That's pretty much it.

• 3:06David Pierce?

  It is like the Switch 2 in every way that if you had sat down and been like, what might the Switch 2 be? You would have come up with basically this, right?

• 3:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's like that old Ali G clip where he's like, I always thought they should make a PlayStation, but better. And then they came out with the PlayStation 2. It's that, but Nintendo did it.

• 3:25David Pierce?

  Ash, Andrew and I have been talking forever about how this is like roughly what we wanted out of the Switch. Is this what you wanted out of the Switch?

• 3:31Speaker 05

  I don't want anything out of them. I just accept what they give me because there's no way to anticipate and there's definitely no way to demand of them. So like, I'm, I'm pleased. This is exactly what I expect because I had no expectations. But we can say at least one potential thing is that there's a new Mario Kart. We did get a brief glimpse of what looks to be a new Mario Kart. It looks like it might support more racers than normal, which might hint at some increased multiplayer capacity. So that's cool, but it's all, you know, caveated heavily with might and could.

• 4:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, and that's actually like a bigger deal than it sounds because like there hasn't been a Mario, a new Mario Kart since the Wii U technically, even though Mario Kart's the Switch's bestselling game. It's it's a port. So they haven't like done a brand new one in a very long time.

• 4:23David Pierce?

  Yeah. So can I just run down the list of the things that I that we we think we learned from this trailer? And you guys tell me what I missed. So like you said, bigger screen, smaller bezels. Joycons are black and bigger, and some of the the the triggers are bigger. There's a new button somewhere on the thing. There's also a new port on the top next to the headphone jack. Is that it?

• 4:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, that sounds correct.

• 4:52David Pierce?

  And then some like little tiny design tweaks.

• 4:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 06

  The kickstand looks a little different.

• 4:57David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah, the kickstand. I will say the fact that there is like a good kickstand, or seemingly better kickstand that does more than one thing, seems very exciting. The kickstand on my Switch is trash and does not hold it at a usable angle and makes me angry every single time.

• 5:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, honestly, the OLED version is like good for its screen, but the improved kickstand makes it like the best version of the Switch for that reason.

• 5:24David Pierce?

  So is there anything else? Is that? Did I miss anything on the list of like things we actually learned from this trailer?

• 5:30Speaker 05

  I'm trying to go over the video trailer in my head.

• 5:33Speaker 07

  Did Joycons seem to connect just slightly differently?

• 5:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, so they don't slide down anymore. They kind of like slot in and there's like a little port or ping protrusion that they kind of hook into.

• 5:47David Pierce?

  I saw some people online being worried about that, that that might be like a thing that can break.

• 5:53Speaker 05

  I mean, there there's that concern, but from what it looks like, it doesn't look like it sticks out far enough to be breakable unless you like really want to get your fingers in there and break it deliberately. Oh, another thing that you did potentially miss is that the the Joycons might have like some kind of Cool mouse functionality because in the video we saw them like snap to their little covers and then like zoom around like it was a mouse. So that might be also something new to expect.

• 6:19David Pierce?

  I saw people saying that and I, I went back through the video and I was like, what in the holy hell is everybody talking about? I cannot see where this thing is acting like a mouse. But there's that moment where it's like they're, they're sort of on their edge, like scooting around the table. Is that what you're talking about?

• 6:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. And it, like at first glance, it might look like, oh, this is just like a cool affectation to show off the controllers, but it actually might belie something functional.

• 6:41Speaker 06

  Yeah. And that's because there was like leaks before saying it's going to have mouse stuff. I think if we didn't have those, no one would put that together.

• 6:48David Pierce?

  What would that be for though? Like are we, do we want like a pointer on the Switch?

• 6:54Speaker 05

  Um, so I heard from people who are discussing this, that it could potentially lead to like things where we could see more 3DS games on the Switch and that's how it interacts somehow, maybe, possibly. Not sure, but that's an idea that people are spitballing.

• 7:10Speaker 06

  Yeah. And you also think of all the PC games that are like portable now because of the Steam Deck. Um, and it makes a lot of sense. And, you know, it's been a long time since there's been a new Mario Paint. So.

• 7:23David Pierce?

  I, I mean, I do wonder how many of those things are now sort of due for a rev because I, I went back and I watched the original trailer to the first Switch from 2017, which is like vibes wise, the complete opposite of the one that we got today. Like that one is pure lifestyle video, right? It's like, it's all like people running around, hanging out with each other and like, there's a party on a rooftop and then a bunch of people who are like playing multiplayer games and they're like diagramming like a soccer plays or something that had, for reasons. Uh, but they were like trying to get you to understand like, here is what this thing is for and all the different ways you can use it on an airplane and all this stuff. This one was just pure, like we took the thing and

• 8:04David Pierce?

  we changed the size and shape of it. The end. Uh, which is probably true, but it does make me think like, okay, if you're not going to blow people's mind with some like new idea about hardware, maybe, maybe the games push is going to have to be bigger, that they're going to have to reinvent some of that stuff for this in order to make this feel as exciting as a new console rev might be.

• 8:27Speaker 07

  Does it have to be? They sell a million, a billion Switches anyway.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 07

  With no changes.

• 8:34Speaker 05

  And they didn't do anything with like, there was no Switch Pro. We got an OLED, which was just like a bigger brighter screen, but we didn't like, we didn't have any like real console refreshes for the Switch and it still sold like gangbusters. There's no need to reinvent the wheel with this. Nintendo knows that.

• 8:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, this video is just like, we won. Like, we figured it out. Like, what else is there to do?

• 8:57Speaker 06

  And like, even, even, I don't know, I'd be surprised if when they do the, the game reveal stuff, there's a lot of stuff that's like exclusive, exclusive, because they still have like 150 million Switches out there and people wanted to buy games for it. So I think there's going to be like, in the same way that like with the PS5 and Xbox Series, whatever, it's been like a long transition period to getting games that only play on there. Um, I think it's going to be similar to the Switch 2.

• 9:22David Pierce?

  Okay. And speaking of that, we, there was some slightly vague information about how games are going to work on this thing, right? Because the, the last bit of news we got, if I'm remembering this correctly, was on election night in the United States, when they just dropped this thing about games being backward compatible. But then it sounds like the, the trailer puts a little bit of an asterisk on that.

• 9:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, they said some, they will be able to play, uh, physical and digital copies of games from the original Switch, but not everything would transfer over. And they did, haven't given us an idea of what games won't. But we can imagine at least some things like the Nintendo Labo stuff, like that's not going to be compatible. I can't think of anything else, but that one's the foremost in my mind. Like those really, really, really weird gimmicky Nintendo Switch games probably won't port over.

• 10:15David Pierce?

  Right. But I will say, the, the thing that made me worried, and maybe I'm worrying about this for no reason, is that what that might mean is that anybody who makes a Switch game has to do something in order to support the Switch 2, that there is some, like, I don't know, like when Apple introduces a new screen size, you have to like go in and it's not a ton of work, but it is some work to like, make it work on the new thing, that maybe it was going to be like that and not just sort of pure out of the box backward compatibility?

• 10:42Speaker 06

  I think it's entirely the controllers, is my guess. Like, um, Labo is designed specifically for those tinier versions of the Joy-Con to fit in. So there's no way to make it work with the bigger one. I think like, Um, Ring Fit Adventure might be a similar one because it has an accessory that like it fits snugly in there. You can't put a bigger one in there. I think it's just those weird oddball ones. I mean, we'll, we'll like, we'll find out soon, but there's always, I think with every Nintendo platform, there's always like one or two of those, like we made something weird and now it doesn't work. But the backwards compatibility thing, I think it'll be those ones.

• 11:18David Pierce?

  Which I think is fine. Like I don't know that Labo backwards compatibility is like a thing I'm super concerned about for the next version of the Switch.

• 11:25Speaker 06

  I mean, maybe the better screen will make Zelda in VR slightly less nauseous. Who knows?

• 11:32David Pierce?

  Counts for something, I suppose. Uh, yeah. So the only game we saw at all was this potentially new Mario Kart. We'll see what that turns out to be. Uh, did it surprise any of you guys that we didn't see more games? I sort of assumed we'd see more games.

• 11:47Speaker 05

  I mean, we didn't see any games hardly for the first one. We saw a glimpse of Breath of the Wild and Skyrim of all games. And that was it. So this isn't too far off the mark where we have one fewer game. And the second game was like a, a game that Bethesda has been trotting out for the last 20 years. So I don't think we're missing much.

• 12:07David Pierce?

  Why does Nintendo do this like this? Like the, I was, I was, I was thinking about the cadence of this right before we were getting on. And it's like, okay, Nintendo puts out a video and then says, we're going to have more to share at a direct in April. Three full months from now, and then there's going to be a bunch of hands on stuff. And then it's launching for some price at some time in the future this year. Like no other company launches a product like this. What, what like? Andrew, I grant that trying to understand Nintendo as a company is, is insane and no one should try to do it. But what is going on here? Why would Nintendo?

• 12:41Speaker 06

  This one is like very simple. Uh, like the answer is the Wii U. Like when that was announced. No one knew what this was like, literally like I remember writing the breaking news post and I was like, is this a Wii accessory? Is this new console? Like, nobody knew.

• 12:55David Pierce?

  Oh, interesting.

• 12:55Speaker 06

  The messaging around that was like so confusing. Um, and it was, you know, a massive flop after I like, how do you mess up after the Wii? That was like a huge breakthrough console, right?

• 13:08Speaker 06

  So like, whatever you say about Nintendo, like they had become very good and precise at messaging. And so they are doing it in stages. So you don't mess things up. Like, the first message is just like, you know, you guys are safe. We didn't mess it up. We just made a bigger Wii or a bigger Switch. And then they get into the other stuff after. They like, I think they're just very certain that like there's of what they want to say and they want to make sure it gets out clearly.

• 13:38David Pierce?

  So if that's true, it seems to me the one thing Nintendo whiffed on is not saying something about the processor. Like looking at our comments and looking at social and looking all and like even my own reaction is like, the main thing I want to know is if this thing is more powerful because it needs to be. And the, the switch was like, it wasn't underpowered when it came out, but it wasn't powerful when it came out and it has like since gotten sort of pathetic in a certain way. Like as a raw horsepower thing and overwhelmingly like what people seem to have wanted to know is like, is this thing going to be more powerful? Is it going to be able to run the kinds of games that I want?

• 14:21David Pierce?

  Is it going to be able to run like new kinds of games over time? And we'll get the answer to that in two and a half months. And maybe it doesn't matter because it's a new switch and everybody's going to buy it anyway, Richard, like you were saying. But it does feel like that's the biggest detail that we still don't know anything about.

• 14:37Speaker 06

  But again, that's just like clouding their message, I think.

• 14:41Speaker 06

  I think you look at like the PS5 Pro reveal and they have like Mark Searney talking about whatever terra flops are and like no normal person knows what that video is saying and anyone who's complaining about not knowing the specs is a person who's still gonna buy a new Switch anyways like I think that is like the thing in the same way that the original video was like all about vibes like this is it it's just they want they don't want to tell you everything they want to tell you the most important thing which is it's the Switch and bigger like that's it.

• 15:11David Pierce?

  Well, that's the thing it's like the and there were a bunch of folks in our comments who were like there this is like a passive aggressive launch video which I didn't immediately read it as but there is kind of something to that where Nintendo is like yeah dumb asses Switch 2 whatever leave us alone here it is and like there is a little bit to that where it's like we don't have to tell you anything it's a Switch 2 you'll buy it shut up.

• 15:35Speaker 07

  Not only will you buy it you'll buy several of these you will own more than one you know it we know it everyone knows it we don't have to tell you how powerful it is and really I'm not sure if how powerful it is matters that much because they don't they don't need that much horsepower to be a slightly better Fortnite machine like they need a little bit but but only little and it's I think durable at this point.

• 15:55Speaker 05

  Nobody's playing Fortnite on the Switch.

• 15:58Speaker 06

  Well, we need to get Charles on here.

• 15:59Speaker 07

  You know what some of my teammates would disagree.

• 16:04Speaker 05

  Not enough not a lot but yeah part of the thing that makes Nintendo Nintendo is the fact that they are very good at doing more with less and I don't think I want to see them change that anyway by building a better mousetrap or a more powerful mousetrap anyway so we can wait for them to reveal all of the specs the only thing that's of concern to me is the fact that you know can we play games like Kingdom Hearts and not have to do it via cloud streaming because that was not a great feeling at all so as long as it can take care of that I'm okay.

• 16:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, like to be clear, like that stuff is important. It's just not the important thing, which is the first message they want to be out there.

• 16:45David Pierce?

  And what is that message other than just, yes, the Switch 2 exists?

• 16:49Speaker 06

  No, that's it. It's the number two. That's it. That's the message.

• 16:53David Pierce?

  I did see somebody, I think it was Brian Crisante who wrote a thing who was like weird. He had a lot of feelings about the fact that it was called the Switch 2 and not the Super Switch or anything else. And he was saying it was the first time ever that Nintendo has just done like the numeral after the console, which I thought was sort of fascinating. And it's like, there's a bunch of like galaxy brain theories you can have about Nintendo as a company here. And Andrew, you have some of those and I'd like to hear them. But I don't know, there is, there is part of me that is like, this console is both exactly what I wanted and maybe less imaginative than you would expect from a company like Nintendo right now.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  Well, can you, if you imagine like them calling it the Super Switch or the Switch Advance or something like that, I feel like that muddles the message more than just calling it the Switch 2 because unlike, you know, PlayStation or whatever, like we, we know, like the, the, the Switch is like a family console, right? And so you've got a lot of grandmas and grandpas and people who don't know what video games are buying these consoles for their kids or even for themselves and muddying it by calling it like a Super Switch or a Switch Advance or some other, you know, kind of name, kind of messes with that. I'm sorry, I'm trying not to curse. And just calling it simply the Switch 2 clearly informs those, those kinds of buyers that, okay, this is the next step.

• 18:10David Pierce?

  It's like the opposite of the DS, which I feel like by the end of it had like 800 names that were totally indiscernible from one another.

• 18:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, you had the 3DS and the 2DS and, you know.

• 18:20Speaker 06

  XL.

• 18:21Speaker 05

  Yeah. So you had no idea if you were like a layman, for lack of a better term, like, okay, what does what? Is this an advancement? Is this like a same thing, but you know, with more bells and whistles? Keep it simple, stupid.

• 18:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think you just need to look at like Xbox's naming scheme to see like how badly that can go.

• 18:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 06

  It's like.

• 18:40Speaker 05

  100%.

• 18:41David Pierce?

  You mean going from Xbox to 360 to one doesn't, that, that's not, that's not simple? That doesn't make sense to you?

• 18:46Speaker 06

  Listen, anyone who's ever tried to put Series X slash S in a headline, absolutely despises this naming scheme.

• 18:54David Pierce?

  Yeah, that, I mean, that's fair. And the PlayStation thing, like, we made a PlayStation, but better. And it's called the PlayStation. Like, it does kind of work. That's, that's fair. And Andrew, you also made the case that I think is right, that this is like. Just incredible flex from Nintendo that they're like, yeah, this thing we did almost a decade ago, like, we crushed it. And you suckers are like, still trying to catch up to this thing that we did forever ago. And so we're just gonna kick it and continue to win because we are 1,000 miles ahead of where everyone else has been this entire time.

• 19:27Speaker 06

  Yeah. And like, everything about the way they did this too, even like, not pre-announcing it, like, Nintendo usually is like, you know, on Wednesday, we're gonna have a direct and we're gonna announce blah, blah, blah. And they give some information. This was like, nope, it's 8 a.m. on a Thursday, here's our new console. So it's like, they know, like, people will pay attention no matter what.

• 19:49David Pierce?

  Yeah. Richard, what do you make of this thing? Is this, is this everything you wanted it to be?

• 19:53Speaker 07

  How does it work with the alarm?

• 19:57David Pierce?

  Maybe that's what the USB port is for.

• 19:58Speaker 07

  When I know the answer to that question, I'll have, have my answer for you. But I mean, otherwise, yeah, you know, it's a switch. It, it will continue to switch. And I thought that it was interesting, especially when you look back at the original video for the, for the first switch, that the, the actual joint, the actual kickstand is better now. So you can actually use it to do the things that they advertised the first one to do.

• 20:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 07

  So maybe an admission of some mistakes. But yes, that overall, their, their viewpoint, that their angle, that the, the way that they're going, they're saying, this is right.

• 20:28David Pierce?

  Yeah. I don't know. There, there is a thing where it's like, this is, this is the equivalent of like, the iPhone 12 to 13, where they're just like, we made everything a little better. We've been working on the things that you work on, and now here's some new ones. And I can't decide how much of me is bummed that Nintendo didn't do something insane and weird and potentially bad, because I think that's like, fun and interesting, versus assuming the specs are what I think that they are. Like, when I look at my Switch, my, I have this like, gross, yellow Switch from 2017 that I still use. And literally all I want out of it is a faster Wi-Fi chip. Like, the, the Wi-Fi on my Switch is trash.

• 21:12David Pierce?

  And if they would just make it fast Wi-Fi, so that my pings would go down in the games I play online, I would be perfectly happy with this console. And so I'm, I'm torn between, like, I wish they had done more. And also, like, I'm super, super glad they didn't do more. And like, we U-FI the Switch and make it worse.

• 21:28Speaker 05

  There's still time. I mean, there's a lot of breathing room between now and April 2nd for them to show, you know, go crazy with it. So, I mean, don't count them out.

• 21:39David Pierce?

  What crazy is there to do, though? It's the Switch 2. They're like, yeah, we finished this thing years ago.

• 21:44Speaker 05

  It's Nintendo. They have ways of surprising. Like, we have no idea what's in store for us, kind of like what Andrew has written about on The Verge, about like, I've given up trying to predict what Nintendo will do. They still have that element of, you know, the ability to surprise.

• 21:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, I do think the surprise things will be not directly tied to the console. It'll be like, we're using this in some weird way in like a Labo-like project. Because that's like, you know, doing it, making it a core part of the console is like a huge risk, which they don't want to take, obviously. But, you know, if no one buys some weird-ass cardboard device, you know, they're still experimenting, but it's not like a big loss. So I think they're still going to take weird swings because that's who they are. But I think it's just not baked into the hardware.

• 22:33David Pierce?

  And I feel like the last decade of big swings in gaming sort of teaches us that that's the right approach. Right? I feel like every time, and Microsoft just can't help itself from doing this, but every time somebody has a big bonkers idea that they like build into the console in a really meaningful way, it goes sideways, right? Microsoft is like, we're gonna reinvent entertainment through the Xbox. And everybody's like, no, thank you. And then they're like, the Kinect is now bundled in. And everybody's like, no, thank you. Whereas like the PlayStation has just continued to be like, it's mostly about playing games with a controller sitting on your couch. If you want some other stuff, here's some other stuff that will sell you. Here's VR and here's Move and here's all these other things. If you want those things, terrific. But fundamentally, we're just building a thing to hold in your hands and play games.

• 23:16David Pierce?

  That has continued to be the thing that works. And I feel like even with the first Switch, what Nintendo has done is essentially build a pretty straightforward thing and an escalating series of insane accessories.

• 23:28Speaker 06

  Even like the gimmicks that they had initially, like, no one uses them. I don't know if you guys remember when like the Switch was announced and they were testing it, like, HD rumble was like a big thing and they were like showing executives like listening to ice cubes. You could tell how many ice cubes were falling into something by the vibrations. And that's like a relatively minor gimmick and didn't end up, you know, they enforce every developer to put that in their games and so it didn't screw things up. But like, that's the kind of thing I think we're gonna see is like, stuff that you can ignore if, if you need to.

• 23:58Speaker 07

  Street Fest is coming back. Get ready.

• 24:01Speaker 06

  That's what, that's what the button's for.

• 24:03Speaker 05

  Picto Chat. I want Picto Chat back.

• 24:06David Pierce?

  What was Picto Chat?

• 24:07Speaker 05

  From the, the DS.

• 24:09David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:12Speaker 05

  That was fun.

• 24:13Speaker 06

  I don't know if you want Picto Chat.

• 24:15Speaker 05

  Okay, yeah, maybe not.

• 24:18David Pierce?

  It was simpler times when we had Picto Chat.

• 24:22David Pierce?

  So what, Andrew, your, your long national nightmare of having to follow the Switch 2 launch is, is not over. What is the next kind of drumbeat here?

• 24:34Speaker 06

  Well, we'll see. I mean, they said they're gonna talk about it in April, but I've also been hearing there may be like a gaming direct, games focused direct in February. So there's gonna be more beats to this and they will probably be dropped on us on a random evening of importance for American politics.

• 24:55David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, there's one of those coming up on Monday, so like, it might happen.

• 24:58Speaker 06

  That's when the price is coming.

• 25:00Speaker 05

  Right.

• 25:00David Pierce?

  What do you guys think the price is gonna be? Let's, let's make some educated guesses here.

• 25:05David Pierce?

  What do we think this thing is gonna cost?

• 25:07Speaker 05

  If it costs more than $400, I'll be surprised.

• 25:11David Pierce?

  What was the original Switch when it came out?

• 25:12Speaker 05

  300.

• 25:13David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 25:13Speaker 05

  And the OLED was 350. Like, the 400, 450, that's it. And even 450 sounds wrong in my ears. In my, yeah, to, to me.

• 25:23David Pierce?

  450 feels like a lot.

• 25:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, it does. But I guess we have no way of knowing unless we know the, the specs on it, because 450 absolutely might be a justified price, depending on what's in that thing. But 400 has to be. I mean, Nintendo's a, they're not like, you know, a PlayStation or an Xbox where they can show you the big shiny box and charge you like 600 bucks for it, because, you know, it's a family company and they, they work with families that have budgets and they don't wanna, you know, they wanna, they don't wanna price people out, like their core audience of people out. So it's gotta be, you know, of course, adjusted for inflation and the costs of like, uh, computer chips and things like that, but it's still have to be affordable. So it's probably gonna be 400 bucks.

• 26:02David Pierce?

  Richard, you're making a face that makes me think you're about to be like, it's a thousand dollars.

• 26:06Speaker 07

  That's what the Switch 2 Pro will be.

• 26:09Speaker 07

  I think the I think the switch too, like, maybe they'll just keep it at 300 or 350.

• 26:13Speaker 05

  That would be incredible.

• 26:15Speaker 07

  I think one of the questions I have is, like, is the switch going to, is the original switch just going to kind of disappear? I I was expecting it won't, they'll keep selling it and sell them side by side, at least for a while. And how long is it until we get games that are only for the Switch 2? Or do they have reduced capabilities if you're playing on the Switch? Or if you have, like, someone like that in your party or something like that? That's probably the, I think the bigger question is, is how quickly does your old Switch get deprecated?

• 26:43Speaker 06

  I like how all of Richard's answers relate to his Apex Legends squad.

• 26:47Speaker 07

  That's the most important thing.

• 26:50David Pierce?

  Don't take this away from me, Nintendo. Andrew, what about you? What do you think?

• 26:53Speaker 06

  I've been trying to convert to American dollars. I do. I do think it'll be like, less than 400, because the whole point of them having the lower specs is because they find the cheapest tech, older technology to squeeze into these things. So that's, if you're not going to do that, then what's the point? Like, you may as well put out, you know, a powerful device if you're gonna go for a higher price. So the whole point of cheaping it on there is like to pass that on to consumers. So it's got to be 400.

• 27:24David Pierce?

  If this thing stays at 299 or whatever, it's, that's gonna be pretty spectacular.

• 27:29Speaker 06

  They're gonna do that and then put the Switch down to like, a super cheap price, purely so that it can beat the PS2.

• 27:37David Pierce?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 27:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:38Speaker 06

  In terms of lifetime sales, that's what's gonna happen.

• 27:41David Pierce?

  They just like, they they want the, they want the victory, even one teeny tiny margin at a time.

• 27:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, I I think if you put like, the the original Switch down to like, a very cheap price, it's still gonna move a ton.

• 27:53David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, truly, other than, well, okay, I have two grapes with my Switch. And thank you for coming to my TED Talk about the things I hate about my seven-year-old Switch. One is that I lost the cable for the dock and I can't find another power cable for the dock that makes it work. So it's just, it's just useless now because it only works at the one stupid cable. And I don't want to buy a whole nother dock just for the one stupid cable. And the other one. Is the Wi-Fi chip. Just simple things. They're like, and then like, people have had issues with the Joy-Cons over the years. I think they're like, fine. But I know a lot of people are much more sophisticated controller users than I am, who are very curious about how these Joy-Cons are gonna work. I just feel like there's, there's all these like little tiny things. If Nintendo would just do those and change nothing else,

• 28:36David Pierce?

  I will be a very happy owner of somewhere between one and six Switch 2s.

• 28:41Speaker 05

  We'll see what colors they come up with and if they release like a special Wind Waker Edition, because that one is gonna sell like hotcakes.

• 28:48David Pierce?

  Do we think there's gonna be another like huge earth-shattering game that comes with it? I mean, like, we got Breath of the Wild with the Switch. Is Mario Kart gonna be that thing for the Switch 2? Like, is that just where we're headed?

• 29:01Speaker 06

  Could be Mario Kart, could be the Pokemon, cuz that's like a huge launch title. Pokemon, uh, what the hell is that called?

• 29:08Speaker 05

  Legend Z-A? Legend Z-A?

• 29:10Speaker 06

  Z-A.

• 29:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 06

  I think either of those is, that's like a launch title for sure. Those are best-selling games. I love Metroid, but that's not like a system seller for, for a launch. So either one of those, you're good.

• 29:24Speaker 05

  Uh, probably, um, a new 3D Mario.

• 29:28Speaker 06

  Yes, that's true.

• 29:30David Pierce?

  Yeah, but even that doesn't feel quite as big as, as like Pokemon feels like the only one that's kind of at the level of Zelda in terms of like, culture-shaking release.

• 29:41Speaker 05

  I feel like Mario occupies that space as well.

• 29:43David Pierce?

  You think?

• 29:44Speaker 06

  Terrible movie made a billion dollars.

• 29:47David Pierce?

  I mean, that's fair. Uh, other people who aren't you liked that movie, I will say.

• 29:52Speaker 06

  Well, I haven't had to watch it as many times as me, so.

• 29:55David Pierce?

  Did you like it the first time you saw it?

• 29:57Speaker 06

  It was fine. It was, it was inoffensive.

• 30:00David Pierce?

  Now you're just increasingly mad at the song Peaches every time you hear it. Is that, is that what's happening?

• 30:04Speaker 06

  Pretty much.

• 30:07David Pierce?

  Fair enough. Um, anything else on the, on the Switch? We, we're still in this place where like this thing has launched and we still don't know all that much about it.

• 30:14Speaker 06

  Let's talk about the LSS. Let's do, let's get into it.

• 30:17Speaker 05

  Let's not. Uh, I hope the Switch 2 cartridges taste better.

• 30:23David Pierce?

  Do you?

• 30:24Speaker 05

  No.

• 30:24David Pierce?

  So let's talk about that.

• 30:27Speaker 05

  That was a joke.

• 30:30David Pierce?

  We do not, we do not endorse child endangerment.

• 30:33Speaker 05

  Please don't, please don't put those in your mouth.

• 30:36David Pierce?

  Richard, you can have 20 seconds to talk about DLSS and then we're taking a break. Here you go.

• 30:40Speaker 07

  I'm just saying that AI in graphics processing is very important. It could be really relevant to the games that we play on our Switch 2s. It is the number one factor that I'm waiting to hear more about. Thank you.

• 30:50David Pierce?

  There we go. All right, we're going to take a break. Ash and Andrew, thank you guys for being here. Unfortunately for both of you, we're going to have to clearly do this a bunch more times before it launches. But for now, thank you both. Richard, stick around, we'll be back, we're going to talk TikTok. We'll be right back.

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• 32:39David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Addie Robertson's here. Hi, Addie.

• 32:41Speaker 09

  Hi.

• 32:42David Pierce?

  Our resident red note expert, as it turns out, was just teaching us how to pronounce the correct name of everybody's favorite new TikTok competitor. Do you want to, do you want to give us a lesson here on what it's actually called?

• 32:53Speaker 09

  I need to caveat this that I am not Chinese and I have not spoken Chinese for a very long time. My impression is Xiao Hong Shu.

• 33:01David Pierce?

  Okay. Richard, how do you feel about that?

• 33:04Speaker 07

  Xiao Hong Shu? I'm getting there.

• 33:07Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 07

  I feel like, I feel like I'm getting, I'll have it by the next week. I'll be a star.

• 33:12Speaker 09

  The first Xiao is little and then Hong is red and then Shu, which is book.

• 33:21David Pierce?

  This app is literally called Little Red Book?

• 33:24Speaker 09

  I believe so, yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 07

  I think the US government is gonna love that.

• 33:28Speaker 09

  Possible that, you know, there's a better colloquial translation.

• 33:32David Pierce?

  This is what we've come to. So, okay, the, the scene setting I just wanted to hear real quick before we get into it is the, the potential TikTok ban is now two days away, as you're hearing this, three days away as we're recording it. We did a whole thing with Lauren Finer on Tuesday's show, talking about what might happen. And then it feels like 100 new possibilities appeared since Tuesday about what might happen. So I want to talk through some of the things that have come up, some of the things we think might be happening, and the deep hilarity of what everyone has done in response to the impending TikTok ban. But let me just start by throwing out some of the like possible outcomes that seem to have arisen over the last few days, and we can talk a little bit

• 34:16David Pierce?

  about them. Outcome number one, I would say, probably most likely in terms of actual things that might happen is some kind of delay in the ban.

• 34:28David Pierce?

  Senator Ed Markey introduced something or said he was going to introduce something that would give it a 270 day extension to either divest or be banned. There was, was it Trump was going to do an executive order that was going to delay it by 60 or 90 days?

• 34:43Speaker 09

  Yeah, he's floated one at least.

• 34:44David Pierce?

  Okay, so a lot of ideas in the air that like, we're just going to kick the can down the road a little bit. Addy, does that strike you as like a real plausible outcome here?

• 34:53Speaker 09

  Well, there was always the option of kicking the can down the road 90 days if there is a deal in place. And depending on the definition of what a deal is, I think that's kind of where people are leaning is we're just going to give them time to figure this out. It seems pretty unlikely to me that they're going to pass a whole new law in, what, like three days?

• 35:15David Pierce?

  I mean, there's some other stuff going on in the political universe too. So I think you're probably right on that. This is the thing that I don't understand though, is like, can anyone actually do this stuff? Cause there's like, there's the ban on Sunday, and then there's inauguration day on Monday, and then something will happen and TikTok will be back? Like, there's rumors that TikTok is going to go away just for a day and then potentially come back? Like, I just don't know how to handicap the realistic possibility of any of this right now.

• 35:48Speaker 09

  Some of it depends on what the Supreme Court does, and unfortunately, we have been frantically waiting for a ruling for several days now. But part of the question is, okay, so the rule here is it's either banned or they have to, ByteDance has to divest it. And the question of what divestiture means, like what can actually satisfy that requirement is a little bit of an open question. I think the thing that Trump really wants and that a lot of people really want is the idea that they can just switch a little bit of ownership around and maybe shuffle, shuffle the board a bit in a way that satisfies the Chinese government and the ruling for divestiture, and then nothing necessarily changes that much, but it comes under the ownership of

• 36:33Speaker 09

  someone American. And the Chinese government doesn't feel like it's lost the TikTok algorithm or like it's gotten strong-armed.

• 36:41Speaker 09

  And then at that point, if there are disagreements, you still get to have this three-month delay in which they could hammer them out.

• 36:47David Pierce?

  What would that in theory look like? If it's, if it's basically, so the, the number I've heard at least is, uh, that this, the, the bar for foreign ownership under this bill is, I think it's 20% ownership.

• 36:58Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 36:59David Pierce?

  So in theory, all, all ByteDance would have to do is find a way to lower its ownership stake under 20% and then everything would be okay? Is that, is that the idea here?

• 37:09Speaker 09

  I think that's a thing that could happen and could be logical. It is possible that you could still then have questions about, all right, but does ByteDance still potentially have some kind of backdoor? Uh, but at the very least, that does seem like it has some kind of reasonable standard in the law, that yeah, you just reduce the, the dependence.

• 37:30David Pierce?

  Uh, that just doesn't make any sense to me because again, like, uh, if, if the big argument we're having here is about national security and access to data, like you know what buys you the backdoor is 20%? Like, whether you have 49% or 20% or 99%, like, you're still gonna have the admin login, right? Richard, like, am I, am I insane here that it feels like this solves nothing? If this is an actual thing we're gonna do?

• 37:53Speaker 07

  Would you give a 20% owner an admin login?

• 37:55David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 37:56Speaker 07

  No, no, no, you're, you're minority owner, no, no admin login for you. And they've already done some things like the Project Texas, moving the data around. Uh, it just, it sounds like we've got this group project that's due on Sunday and no one has done the work. You know, you, you got the Chinese government, they're not picking up the phone. You got one of these students that's already checked out, um, Biden, he's, he's on his way out, this, this is not his grade. You got someone coming in, but they're not gonna be here before the due date. And Congress and the Supreme Court just haven't done it.

• 38:23Speaker 09

  I really wish I had a clever way to build on this analogy, but the things that complicate that are that A, nobody wants to finish the project. Everybody's sick of this. Trump doesn't want TikTok to shut down on his watch. Biden, as far as we can tell, there's some level of buyer's remorse in the administration is maybe trying to find a way to delay it. And then the Chinese government and ByteDance, obviously, before the ban, they're going to give you the most apocalyptic pronouncement ever. They're not going to say, oh, yeah, no, it's fine. We're in talks with all these other guys. They're going to just wait until the last minute to see if they can hammer on a deal.

• 38:57David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, to that end, there was a report going around, I forget exactly where I saw it, that that one possible outcome is that TikTok will just kind of performatively go away, just like pull the plug more aggressively than it even needs to on the 19th, just to prove how bad it would be if TikTok was gone. Because I think a lot of people have been talking about the idea that what might happen is it might just sort of slowly degrade over time, that people who have it on their phones will be able to continue to use it. But that actually what might happen is TikTok will just be like, oh, you want to see TikTok gone? TikTok's gone. Suck on that. And it'll just be sort of, it'll, it'll just make everybody miss it a little bit for 24 hours and then we'll come back on inauguration day with, with Chu Chu, the CEO, sitting

• 39:41David Pierce?

  on the day, I said inauguration day with Trump. Like, there's a version of that that actually makes a lot of sense to me, that TikTok is going to be like, oh, you want to ban us? Check this out, just as a flex.

• 39:52Speaker 09

  That both makes political sense and it might kind of be necessary because hosting services also have to work with, have to cease working with ByteDance and Oracle hosts a bunch of American data.

• 40:04David Pierce?

  Right.

• 40:04Speaker 09

  So it's possible that you're going to see that no matter what.

• 40:08David Pierce?

  Yeah, I, so are we really at a point where like, just none of this makes sense and anything could happen? I guess we might get a real answer if and when we hear from the Supreme Court, which I would say we're all sort of surprised has taken this long to issue any kind of pronouncement about how it feels.

• 40:23Speaker 09

  I think not everyone is surprised, but it is definitely very annoying and not people's first choice. This is also all ignoring that. Obviously, I say this in a way where it's bad, but to me, much like by far funniest option, which is the law goes into effect and Trump says he's not going to enforce it. And then he asked, all of the app stores have to play chicken and like, see if they're going to go with these rules. So, which, based on Supreme Court arguments, it sounds like that's still a pretty huge risk for them. But that is still an outcome that people have not completely ruled out.

• 41:00David Pierce?

  Yeah. Can you just game that out a little bit? We talked about this with Lauren a little on Tuesday, too. But it does seem like this question of if, if Trump puts out an executive order on day one, saying, I'm not going to enforce this law for some period of time. In theory, everyone could just go terrific and resume business as normal and TikTok continues. But there, there, there seems to be this sort of accent pressure on all of the players that exist even outside of that. Can you just explain like what, what the tension is there for those companies?

• 41:34Speaker 09

  There are a few different tensions. The first tension is that it is very risky to trust Trump's loyalty on a thing. And that this creates a lot of leverage to, if you make him mad, let him do something that's going to hurt you very badly. There is also the chance that the administration could be held in contempt of court if they have gotten an explicit order to enforce this law and they just refuse to. And then there's also the chance that even if they say they're not going to enforce it, the platforms and the app stores say, yeah, this is just too big a risk. It doesn't matter what you say. We're kicking them off.

• 42:08David Pierce?

  Richard, what would you do? If, if I'm who in this? You're Google. You're, you're Sundar Pichai, and you're, you're sitting there in front of the TikTok is in the App Store switch. Uh, what are you doing? I'm replacing it with YouTube Shorts.

• 42:23David Pierce?

  Just every time someone searches TikTok, it just instantly takes you to YouTube Shorts. The thing is that I love is that Google legitimately has the power technically to just do that. Like, if you Google TikTok, it's like, never mind, you wanted YouTube Shorts, right? There's only YouTube Shorts now. TikTok never existed. You didn't even TikTok was a figment of your imagination. There has only ever been YouTube Shorts. Speaking of YouTube Shorts, this comes back to our favorite app, Red Note slash Little Red Book. One of the funniest things that has happened this week is a lot of people, rather than leave TikTok for quote unquote, more stable places like Instagram or YouTube Shorts,

• 43:08David Pierce?

  these other platforms that have just basically relentlessly copied TikTok for several years. People have instead gone the other way and found more Chinese apps. Red Note and Lemonade being, I would say, the big two. Addy, can you can you explain what these apps are and how this is happening like this?

• 43:28Speaker 09

  Okay, so Lemonade and Red Note are both, they are Chinese apps that present, in theory, basically all of the same risks as TikTok. Lemonade is owned by ByteDance, the same parent company as TikTok. And I feel like at this point, right now, there's a little bit of, it's kind of a free for all. People are just, this is summer break, everybody's experimenting. And that if TikTok were long term banned, then we would see people say, I need to make money. I'm going to go to these platforms, even though I find them boring and they annoy me. So I don't know what the long term future would be, but yeah, the short term future is that people have gone to just the exact same thing and possibly it's to some level

• 44:12Speaker 09

  just to actively spite the people who passed this law.

• 44:16David Pierce?

  Oh, I mean, I think it's, I think it's extremely just to spite those people. I mean, the, the like goodbye to my Chinese spy thing has been, has become rampant on TikTok. And everybody is making fun of it by going to these apps. Like, what was the thing I saw today? Duolingo is booming and suddenly tons of people are wanting to learn Mandarin in order to be on these apps. Like, this bit has now gone so far that I'm like, at what point is this not a bit? And at what point is everybody just going to excitedly start using Chinese social media apps?

• 44:43Speaker 07

  I think we're there. I think, I think we're at the point where it has stopped being a bit. I mean, people went over to this, this app, Xiao Hongxu. Shu, I'm going to get there. I'm going to get the pronunciation right. Just so I can I can get my following up. They found out that Cardi B has been there for years posting.

• 44:58David Pierce?

  Really?

• 44:59Speaker 07

  You know, this, yes. The the weird thing about it is that unlike the other apps, they don't separate their Chinese and American audience, or Chinese and international audiences. So you suddenly have these people talking directly to people from China in a way that they probably never have. And there's there's something there. I I don't know. I don't know how long it will last, if it will be banned too, or what what might happen. But something has happened. Also, American companies apparently cannot make good algorithms.

• 45:27David Pierce?

  Yeah, I I will say I I have continued to be flummoxed by this fact that like that it is clearly true that there is something about TikTok that neither YouTube nor Instagram has replicated, despite both being desperate to replicate TikTok. Like, they're just nakedly trying to do TikTok. They're not even trying to do like their own versions of TikTok. They're just trying to do TikTok. And still, nothing has been able to quite do it. And and to your point, Richard, people are flooding to these other apps and being like, yes, this gives me the same thing. And it is like, what what have these Chinese companies, in particular ByteDance, which just keeps making identical looking apps under different names, apparently?

• 46:07David Pierce?

  They've just figured out some turn in the system here that no one else has figured out or is willing to do or something. And it's just very strange to me. Like, somebody, Adam Mosseri should be able to just turn the dial to full TikTok, and they should have just known how to do this by now, and yet, they can't.

• 46:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, have you used Instagram Reels? Like, sometimes I'll get stuff that I like, but sometimes it'll show me like something absolutely horrible that makes me never want to open that app again. And TikTok has that problem much less.

• 46:38David Pierce?

  I will say YouTube is the one that really gets me. YouTube is the is the one that I hate the most and frustrates me the most because YouTube, no service on the internet has as much good declarative information about what I want than YouTube. I have clicked on so many things on YouTube on purpose for 15 years. I have been like, I would like to watch this video for 20 minutes. Like, it should have my interests nailed. And like YouTube Music is actually very good as a result of that because you turn on YouTube Music and it just looks at everything you've ever watched and listened to on YouTube before and suddenly starts giving you recommendations. So the like, the cold start problem there is solved and it's awesome.

• 47:20David Pierce?

  And yet Shorts is nonsense. Like, it doesn't make any sense to me that it's like YouTube knows me or should know me better than any service on the internet. And it cannot figure out which short to recommend to me. And like, and TikTok is just like, do you want to watch new girl clips? And I'm like, sure, I'll watch new girl clips. Like, great, let's do it. YouTube cannot do that. And it drives me nuts.

• 47:40Speaker 07

  And Eddie, I want to know what you think about this, but I think that the saying goodbye to my Chinese spy taps into my personal conspiracy theory about TikTok that I've always had, which is that, and also about a lot of AI things, is that it's not AI, it's just a guy named Al. And that there's a lot more human curation behind the scenes. And that's why it's so good. Is because you're kind of tapping into these cues of content. And there's just someone saying, oh, yeah, that's a good video. I'll put it at the top. And that's why you keep getting good videos. That's my guess. And I, whatever it is, it would be great if someone else could figure it out because someone needs to know that I want to see 1980s car ads. And that's the only thing I want to see. And if you just show me that, I'll never close the app ever again. But Eddie, what do you think?

• 48:23Speaker 09

  I unfortunately cannot speak to the actual algorithmic changes here. I know that for a long time TikTok did really push to be sort of the shiny, happy place on the internet, which sometimes produced weird, very bad effects, like it would demote content from people who seemed likely to be bullied, which was, say, LGBT people. But it's possible that it's just optimizing for a different metric than, say, Instagram, or which is constantly dialing up and down things like political content and news, and can't seem to figure out what it's going for. At least, that's meta in general. So I can't tell if it's that it would be, it's badly tuned, or if it's tuned in a way that has

• 49:04Speaker 09

  the sort of different business logic, and that just produces less of a certain thing. Or possibly that it's the user base itself ended up Producing a thing and the network effects kind of snowballed that.

• 49:17David Pierce?

  I do think there's something to that last part in particular that I think TikTok got kind of a last mover advantage that by by being able to just show up from scratch and build something, especially in kind of the like it blew up in the US, especially during the pandemic, when everything was weird and everybody just wanted like an escape and dance challenges suddenly make sense that I think in the same way that if you had just like in 2019 and 2020, just flooded Instagram with dance challenges, a lot of people actually would have hated it. But on TikTok, because it was new and different and people hadn't really experienced it yet, it felt good. And so I think like, to some extent, on Instagram and on other places, you're trying to like, you have to unlearn some things before you

• 50:02David Pierce?

  can relearn some things, whereas TikTok just got to show up and do things differently. And I think that actually really worked to its benefit. But then again, I keep coming back to this idea that everyone has decided that TikTok is the best at it. So just go do that. Like, just piss off all the Instagram users for three days, and then they will decide that they love it. Because everybody hates reels, and the only thing anybody says about reels is that it is just old TikToks. And so it's like, you don't have anything to lose. Just throw the thing away and make it TikTok, and it'll probably work.

• 50:32Speaker 07

  Throwing out the rulebook had had some advantages. And I think, like a lot of people during the pandemic, I opened up TikTok, I was kind of bored, and it immediately diagnosed me with ADHD, you know, waving an app, should not do. It's bad. It should not diagnose medical conditions like that. It was correct. And Instagram reels doesn't really do that. And I'm just like, you could probably do a little bit more to to figure out who your users are.

• 50:57David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 50:57Speaker 07

  You have enough data.

• 50:58David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's just, it's just sitting there. So, okay, we should talk about one other possible TikTok outcome before we fully throw up our hands and just wait for somebody to tell us what's happening, which is the Elon Musk of it all. Richard, can you can you make this make sense to me? There has been some sort of loose reporting that maybe what'll happen is Elon Musk will save TikTok.

• 51:19Speaker 07

  Well, in one of the possibilities that that, you know, Adi has mentioned is that ByDance could divest, that they could own less of TikTok. So someone would need to own more, someone who has a lot of money and who can get a lot of money, because TikTok is unquestionably worth a lot. So who can get a lot of money in a hurry to buy a social media site? Elon Musk, who is much loved in China. Elon Musk, who might be able to be influenced by the Chinese government, because he needs to sell cars in the country and they control that. And also the resources in the country to make those cars. Elon Musk.

• 51:52Speaker 07

  Fitz, I mean, I don't know if he checks all of the boxes, but he does check a lot of them.

• 51:55Speaker 09

  Also, the box of being tied specifically to the Trump administration, which has made China hawkishness a big deal.

• 52:00David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's as close as you can come to selling part of your company to the United States as you can kind of get right now, is selling it to Elon Musk. Do we think this is a real possibility? Addy, if you were to like handicap this on the list of possible outcomes, do you think this is like X absorbs TikTok is a is a real thing that might happen?

• 52:20Speaker 09

  I might phrase it as TikTok absorbs X, but I think it's not impossible. It it seems.

• 52:26David Pierce?

  You know, he'd rename it X, though. He'd be, it would be called like Xvideo. And everybody would be like, oh, I'm an Xvideoer now.

• 52:35Speaker 09

  I mean, once all the porn sites get banned, Xvideos will be up for sale again.

• 52:41Speaker 09

  Yeah, no, I think that for a while, there was a lot of noise about how the Chinese government absolutely was going to refuse, but given all the reports now, it certainly doesn't seem impossible.

• 52:50David Pierce?

  It seems like a terrible idea. Like, I hate the idea that this might happen, which makes it potentially likely that it's going to happen. Like, Richard, to your point, no, like, I think one of the the two things really that I have seen as as total impediments to this are TikTok is enormously expensive and China is not interested in selling. And I do think it's possible that Elon Musk is the only person capable of solving both of those problems. He has clearly an infinite ability to raise money. And also, like you were just explaining, is is as palatable to the Chinese government as any person in the United States for a variety of reasons.

• 53:28Speaker 07

  It like it fits. I don't like it, but it kind of fits. Well, I guess I'll see you guys on Xiaohongshu.

• 53:35Speaker 09

  I'm interested in it because I think it will be the absolute purest test of inertia you could possibly devise. That TikTok is just so notoriously moderated. That is the thing that defines it and it also it is a place that tends to try to at least, I think, focus on positivity ostensibly. That is the absolute opposite of what Elon Musk is interested in. It is a thing that is notably full of silos and you're trying to just split people up into the perfect thing for them as much as possible. And X has now become a thing that just feeds you Elon tweets. They're just kind of polar opposites to each other and it seems to be not really just a business decision on Musk's part.

• 54:18Speaker 09

  It's a thing that he just genuinely thinks social media should be. And I'm very curious how the TikTok community would react to that.

• 54:25David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, I keep coming back to I made the the ship of Theseus comparison on Tuesday's show too. But there is to me this real thing where like there is no version of TikTok that gets divested that still to me feels like TikTok. And so it's like the upside is it would continue to be TikTok. It would have a lot of users. It might be called Xvideos, but it would. The people wouldn't have to go somewhere else. And like you said, that's a very powerful thing, but like, I don't know. It turns out people are willing to go somewhere else. The number of people who just randomly signed up for an app with literally a Chinese name in the American App Store.

• 55:07David Pierce?

  Like it actually turns out maybe the inertia is not nearly as strong as anybody thought that when people need somewhere to go, they'll go.

• 55:14Speaker 09

  I don't want to over determine that, given just how big TikTok is. And of course, some people are going to jump ship. But I do, yeah, it does seem like other platforms say X have meaningfully lost some number of users and that that definitely can happen.

• 55:28David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, it is. I think the the X thing is actually a really interesting comparison there because like we've talked about this a lot where there was the there was the big boom on Mastodon that slowed down and then there was the big boom on Threads that continues to happen, but now Threads is weird and there's now there's been a big boom on Blue Sky and Blue Sky is like meaningful and and large now, but is still a tiny fraction of the size of Threads, which is still a fraction of the size of X. And so maybe for Elon Musk, what you've learned is you can weather these storms because they end up being really vocal and maybe not that sticky over time.

• 56:03Speaker 07

  I think one thing that gets really tricky there is what happens to cap cut in really any of these scenarios because in a way that's maybe different from all other kinds of social platforms, the way that you make the videos really influences the videos that are on the platform and the people who want to use the app. And having a video editor that a lot of people like to use and find easy to use to make really high quality videos has been a huge part of TikTok's appeal. So that's kind of just another question that has to be asked. And in the in the case of something like X or something like that, that's that's not really the issue. You everyone can type into the box the same way that they did before. But if something happens to the editor, just as much as the algorithm, that's a problem.

• 56:45David Pierce?

  Right. And on the flip side, that combination of things might make TikTok harder to copy than anything else. Like you could sort of peel away each of the pieces that makes it work. But as long as it has that collection of things, it's it's going to be harder to copy TikTok than it is to just like, in theory, all you need is a bunch of people in text boxes and you can beat X at its own game. Like, that's essentially what Threads has been trying to do. TikTok has a larger collection of things that are hard to beat.

• 57:15Speaker 09

  Yeah, there are also just symbiotic businesses, like they've tried to move into book publishing based on the popularity of book talk, which is not like a killer app. It's not going to destroy it, but it does mean there's just a lot of stuff going on here.

• 57:30David Pierce?

  For sure. All right. Well, this is like, God help us. We're gonna do this again next week, I'm sure. But before we go to a break, can we talk about the other Supreme Court thing that happened this week?

• 57:42Speaker 09

  We can.

• 57:43David Pierce?

  You spent, I would say, an unusual amount of your week listening to Supreme Court live streams. Like, this is not like a normal thing you spend most of your time doing.

• 57:51Speaker 09

  The court is definitely Sunday before group project mode right now.

• 57:56David Pierce?

  Yeah. So, okay, so this was the porn trial. Can you explain what's going on here?

• 58:00Speaker 09

  All right. So this is the trial called Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. And the idea is that Texas passed this law that's very similar to a lot of other state laws that says that if a site has more than a third adult content, then it needs to agegate its platform in a way that is more rigorous than like clicking a box that says I'm 18. And in Texas's case, it also has to put up these warnings that porn destroys your health, which is not scientifically proven, that causes addiction and harms minors and all that.

• 58:35David Pierce?

  That's just a thing you can say if you want to, I guess. Sure.

• 58:38Speaker 09

  So this was then taken up to the court. A district court blocked it, said, look, there are all kinds of problems with making people hand over identifying information before they go and look at sensitive content, especially during a period where Texas is, say, cracking down on LGBT people. And then the Fifth Circuit, which is where law goes to die, said, no, this is fine. We're gonna apply just the lowest standard for considering speech. Not literally the lowest standard, but unusually low standard for considering whether this is going to chill speech, which means, okay, we're good. Let this happen. It happened. And then after that, it has gone to the Supreme Court. It was argued

• 59:21Speaker 09

  yesterday. It is probably not even remotely close to over, but we got a pretty broad section of questions about it.

• 59:29David Pierce?

  So what is the free speech argument here? I think age verification is the kind of thing that has come up a bunch of different times and a bunch of different. You know, cases around the legal world recently, but why is this a free speech debate at all?

• 59:42Speaker 09

  So this has come up a few times. It has primarily during the late 90s and early aughts, which is that if you put a burden on people to access something that is speech-related, that burden has to have a compelling interest and it has to be sort of the thing that's really the best solution, that there can't be a sort of more narrow, less onerous system. And a lot of the argument for making age verification unconstitutional is, first of all, it's just a barrier to access speech for children and adults alike. It adds this process to get to something that is legal and that is protected by the First Amendment.

• 1:00:25Speaker 09

  The other issue is there really has never been an age verification system that is both rigorous enough that it's not trivial to circumvent and not producing something that creates a pretty significant security and privacy risk.

• 1:00:40David Pierce?

  Right. I feel like the one end of that spectrum is like the things on the alcohol webpages, where they're just like, enter your birthday and you just enter like, I was born in 1931. And it's like terrific and lets you in. It's like we have satisfied something here, but we're not actually accomplishing anything. All the way to the flip side of like, you can make these things very secure, but then they cause all kinds of other problems.

• 1:01:03Speaker 09

  Right. The sort of worst case scenario is you put your government issued ID into a system and it permanently links you with something that you don't want people to see.

• 1:01:13David Pierce?

  A list of all the porn you watch, you mean?

• 1:01:15Speaker 09

  Yeah. And then everything gets hacked and then the exact details of your viewing of adult video is out there for everyone to see. This is not how most age verification systems work at this point. They have added in more safeguards, but we still don't have. A really great solution. And anyway, back to 20 years ago, the thing they determined at that point was the internet as it stands, then you just, you have the better option of content filtering, that it is possible for you to prevent children from accessing porn on your computer by putting a filter on it. And that means we are not going to go this extra higher step of burdening everybody, including adults, with a system that creates

• 1:01:59Speaker 09

  privacy and security risks. And now it's been 20 years and we're considering this again.

• 1:02:04David Pierce?

  So is the question now, does that still work? Like, is that still the right approach? The content filtering thing? Like, is that, is that again, the question? Is that a better way?

• 1:02:13Speaker 09

  The, the question before the Supreme Court at this point was actually, what standard do you apply to evaluate whether this Chills speech, which is known as scrutiny?

• 1:02:23David Pierce?

  It's one of those where they're like, we're not even arguing the case. We're just arguing the case about the case. And it's just like, we're just going to lawyer it all the way down.

• 1:02:31Speaker 09

  It's kind of a little bit in between, which is that, yeah, that's the question is whether we send this back and say, you have to decide this based on a different standard. But there were also a lot of questions that were about the broader issue of, all right, well, has the internet changed? Do, has age verification changed? Is there a compelling enough interest in protecting children from adult content that we should reconsider this? It was, it was a hearing that I think doesn't necessarily provide a clear picture of what's going to happen next.

• 1:03:03David Pierce?

  Well, that sounds like every tech-related hearing anyone has had in the last several years. So I'm glad we're making a lot of progress in just kind of arguing around the edges without actually talking about the real things going on for people.

• 1:03:14Speaker 09

  With the exception of TikTok, which after that, everyone was like, oh, TikTok, TikTok is screwed.

• 1:03:18David Pierce?

  That's fair. That is, that is very fair. So you actually make the case that these two cases are somewhat connected to each other, that you can kind of draw a line between the Pornhub hearing and the TikTok hearing. Can you, can you explain the connection there?

• 1:03:31Speaker 09

  I think this is not necessarily the biggest issue in either of these, but in both cases, what you're doing is pitting two government interests against each other. In TikTok, you've got, there is this national security risk. The Chinese government could harvest everybody's data or... Push covert propaganda and we're going to pit this against the speech rights of a company that operates in the United States and a bunch of people who are using that platform for speech. So it's national security versus speech. Then in FSCV Paxton, you've got this issue of, all right, there is a compelling state interest in protecting minors. If you

• 1:04:11Speaker 09

  run a store, you can't sell Playboy to a minor in like a brick and mortar outlet. Okay, we're going to try to apply the same thing to the internet because there is just such a clear risk for minors accessing adult content. And we're going to weigh that against everybody else's rights.

• 1:04:29David Pierce?

  As we've talked about so many times in this show, we're at a moment politically where it feels like if you want to get any kind of broad agreement about technology, you have to either yell about children or yell about China. And it's very funny that we are just kind of simultaneously doing both of those things in the Supreme Court right now. It just feels like we've, we've hit a nexus of something.

• 1:04:48Speaker 09

  Children and the national security are, yeah, clear. The classic, we're going to change speech law.

• 1:04:54David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 09

  I think we're also just at a moment where the First Amendment has just produced a lot of side effects that make everybody mad. And a lot of them are legitimately really frustrating. And so there's this sort of if the law you made led you here, what uses the law idea going around.

• 1:05:11David Pierce?

  Right. And, and yeah, and it is, I mean, and you've, you've written about this a few times that the, the question underneath all of it is like, how important is the First Amendment? Right. And it's like, are we, are we ready to start tearing it down piece by piece in order to solve some of these other problems? Or is the First Amendment worth these other problems?

• 1:05:30Speaker 09

  And we're looking at Europe right now, which is passing a bunch of tech regulation and obviously has a different speech framework. And there are things there that I think, that I would say have not worked out great. But we're also looking at this and saying the internet could be different. And I think there are people for whom that's appealing.

• 1:05:46David Pierce?

  Fair. So I think we have a pretty clear sense of how the Supreme Court was leaning with the TikTok stuff. We're still infuriatingly waiting on them to issue some actual information. But I feel like everybody came out of that hearing pretty aligned on where it seemed like the, the winds were blowing. What's your sense with the, the Pornhub stuff?

• 1:06:04Speaker 09

  I really don't know. We talked to several people and they were like, we really don't necessarily know. I do think that, so one of the things that came out of this was this quote, everybody kind of dumped on, which was that Justice Alito says, all right, so one of the covered companies here is Pornhub, right? Or one of the covered platforms. All right. So if you go on Pornhub, do you have essays on there? Do you have the equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.? And everyone was like, Alito, what are you doing? Do you have any idea how Pornhub works? And I think that was actually, I think that's the wrong read of it. I think that maybe I am wrong on this, but I don't think really for a minute that he genuinely thinks this thing is, has a bunch of intellectual value. And I think

• 1:06:48Speaker 09

  there was just this really running through line of, we are going to prove that anything that is porn on the internet is worthless, and that it should not have speech protections. It is obviously just harmful, harmful to kids. You're making this argument that it's going to hurt sexual health sites, or educational content, or things that are artistic. And now we're saying, no, it doesn't have Gore Vidal.

• 1:07:10David Pierce?

  I read Pornhub for the articles. Is really, it's like, that was your, you put that in, in one of the stories, and it is the best sentence that has been on the Verge.com this week. I was very proud of that moment.

• 1:07:19Speaker 09

  And there is, they, the lawyer did raise the point that there is like sexual health content. There is, funnily enough, a woman whose deal is that she just does video essays, and like teaches things, and makes money off it.

• 1:07:31David Pierce?

  Apparently, the rev share on Pornhub is very good.

• 1:07:33Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34David Pierce?

  The economics. Maybe that's where TikTok will go. Go, go do that. Pornhub.com/TikTok. Make it happen. This could do it. Richard, what do you think about Pornhub? Just in general. What are your thoughts?

• 1:07:46Speaker 07

  I'm gonna talk about free speech. An app that you can use, where you can see what it's like without the First Amendment. It's called Xiaohu Shu. You should try it out. A lot of people on there who can do, can talk to you about the Constitution and why they don't use it.

• 1:08:01David Pierce?

  Yeah. Say hello to your Chinese spy while you're there. All right. We gotta take one more break. Addie, thank you for joining us. Richard, we're gonna come back and we're gonna blow through some news, because holy God, is there a lot going on this week. We'll be right back.

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• 1:09:48David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. There's more policy stuff. Let me just read you some headlines. Joe Biden signs executive orders, speed AI data center reconstruction. U.S. finalizes rule to effectively ban Chinese vehicles. FTC sues John Deere, which is not a sentence I expected to read this week. There's some DJI stuff and controversy going on. I don't want to talk about policy and politics anymore. There's like, there's a lot of this to come for the next few weeks. Richard, do you care about any of that at this moment? Or can we just like move on to more fun gadgety things? Remember drones? Just say, remember drones? Remember drones? I feel the same way about drones in 3D. Printers where like for years, everybody was like, everybody's gonna have one of these. And it's like, probably not, though. Seems unlikely. I was at CES and there were a bunch of people who were like,

• 1:10:32David Pierce?

  it's time for the the second coming of the at home 3D printer for mainstream users. And I was like, okay, best of luck with that, friends. And the thing they were showing off was like six feet tall and like $4,000. And it's like, I don't think this is the one, y'all. But anyway, all right, let's talk about Sonos. Because I actually think in the in the gadget world, this was probably the biggest and both most surprising and most unsurprising thing that happened this week. What happened this week, Richard?

• 1:11:02Speaker 07

  Their CEO stepped down and some other executives left.

• 1:11:06David Pierce?

  Full house cleaning at Sonos, basically.

• 1:11:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, it turns out that releasing an app update that doesn't work when your whole thing is giving people a system that works when they want it to work is bad. And means that a lot of leaders of your company have to leave.

• 1:11:20David Pierce?

  Yeah. So, okay, so Patrick Spence, the CEO is out. Tom Conrad, who is, I would argue, one of the most sort of quietly fascinating people in tech. He has just been like at every weird inflection point in the tech industry over the years. Can I just quickly read you a list of some of the places that Tom Conrad has worked over the years?

• 1:11:38Speaker 07

  Hit me.

• 1:11:39David Pierce?

  He was at Pandora for 10 years in the middle of like the crazy online music revolution. He was the VP of Product at Snapchat. He was the Chief Product Officer at Quibi for all of Quibi's life. Yeah, Quibi, everybody's favorite number one streaming service. And now was the Director of the Board at Sonos for a while and is now the interim CEO. But according to like the memos we've seen and the changes that are being made, sure seems like he is not acting like an interim CEO. So Tom Conrad, just like guy around the tech industry when weird things are happening. Very interesting.

• 1:12:15Speaker 07

  Real Jeff Teague of tech execs.

• 1:12:17David Pierce?

  It's exactly. Who knows if he's as good a podcaster as Jeff Teague, though? Tom Conrad, if you ever want to come on The Vergecast and tell war stories about your time in the NBA, let us know, we're ready. Yeah, so the Chief Product Officer also leaving, I think the Chief Commercial Officer, I believe was her title, also leaving the company. Big, huge changes at Sonos.

• 1:12:40David Pierce?

  This feels both like maybe the right thing, given what has happened to Sonos, but also like not a good sign that this company is like, it's one thing to say, we made a mistake. I think it's pretty obvious now that Sonos got kind of way out over its skis. They were like, we need new things to do and new ways to make money as a public company. So they decided to make headphones and they were like, we're going to get into the TV space and had all these big ideas about expansions, when actually what they should have done is just kept making really good speakers that people liked. And you can see how the next thing to do is kind of retrench. But I think in many cases, you can do that without turning over all of the leadership of your company.

• 1:13:22David Pierce?

  This just seems like not a great sign for what is happening and what is maybe to come from Sonos at this point.

• 1:13:29Speaker 07

  It feels like it usually doesn't work out well. But yeah, so they had to get those headphones out, just had to release these Sonos S10 headphones, so they kind of had to change all of their technology. And I mean, as I understand, I'm one of the few people, I think, who doesn't own a Sonos system, but it's always seemed like Sonos sells multi-room audio that costs a little too much, but it works.

• 1:13:47David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:48Speaker 07

  Is it?

• 1:13:48David Pierce?

  That, no, I think that's exactly right. And for years, it was the only thing like it, that it was like, it was, it was too expensive, probably by, I don't know, 40 or 50%, right? It was like, you could get, you could get a speaker that sounded just as good for somewhere in the range of half the price. But then if you wanted a bunch of them and you wanted it to make sense and work with the apps that you used, there just wasn't anything like it. And then Google started building a system like it, and then they got into that whole lawsuit about it. And, you know, Amazon's audio systems got better. And then you can just like cast audio around and like Bluetooth speakers work fine. And so we're, we're at a point now where the idea of... Sonos' basic thing, I think, is a little less special than it once was, but still,

• 1:14:33David Pierce?

  until this app fiasco, Sonos was still better at this than everybody else. And it feels like, over the last 12 months, in order to ship headphones that I never ever hear anyone talk about and have never once seen in the wild, just burned all of its goodwill. And I think I'm at the point now where like, I wouldn't consider Sonos to be the thing that just works. Even though like, my Sonos system still works great. I have zero problems with it. I never used the Sonos app, which is, I think, part of it. But, like, we're sort of at a point, both where with all this product stuff, and now with all of this change, it's like, Sonos feels unstable, like, existentially, in a way that I think is sometimes very hard to come back from.

• 1:15:14Speaker 07

  I think that the takeaway that I'm getting from this is that, that reputation is something that's worth a lot to people, that that's what people were paying for, is that they knew Sonos was the one that they could buy, and it would probably work pretty well. And if it didn't work, you know, you could probably get somebody to make it work for you. And so many of these other tech companies, yeah, I mean, okay, so Google's getting into multiroom audio, Apple is sort of in speakers, but neither of them were very serious about it. It's just a side business for them. For Sonos, it's their business. They care, they want to make it, they want to make the experience good for you. But then they, it was the one thing, it was the one thing that they had, that their competitors really couldn't buy, even with all of their tech billions, and they seemed to have squandered it.

• 1:15:55David Pierce?

  Yeah, I completely agree. And I think, it's maybe not impossible to get it back, but it's going to take a lot of work. And there are a lot of, like, longtime Sonos users. One of the things that Sonos had going for it, like, the company's greatest problem was, nobody needed to upgrade their Sonos stuff because it was so good. And I think, there are a lot of people now who are feeling pretty burned by that relationship, and getting that back is going to be a real challenge. Anyway, this is a lightning round, as you can tell already, we're going very quickly to this. Let's see a few more. We got some information about the supposed slim iPhone 17, which might be called the iPhone 17 Air. Richard, I hate this.

• 1:16:38David Pierce?

  I hate it. That's it. That's all I have to tell you.

• 1:16:41Speaker 07

  Speaking of companies that are very successful and need to build a new product for some reason to sell something else, here comes a slim iPhone that you didn't ask for. I think some of the rumors have been that this could replace the Plus model, that it was big but still with the lower specs. So I think based on the rumors that we've heard is that this is something that would be have a design that looks a lot different than the current iPhone, than, you know, the regular iPhones and iPhone Pros. It maybe wouldn't have quite as high of the specs as the Pro, but it would probably be more expensive. It'll be very slim. When you, when you take it out of your pocket and you're somewhere, people will know you've got the iPhone Air if that's, if that's the name.

• 1:17:21Speaker 07

  It's something that they can do. It's something new. And I think that's a real issue for Apple and for really these other companies. And also Samsung, who is rumored to be about to debut a slim phone as well, because of course, if, if Apple has one, so will Samsung. How do you sell an iPhone when everyone has an iPhone and the iPhone that they have is pretty good? Apple Intelligence does not seem to have moved the needle on that.

• 1:17:43David Pierce?

  Nope.

• 1:17:44Speaker 07

  What do you do next? And the answer is maybe make one that looks a lot different so that people can say, I have the new one.

• 1:17:51David Pierce?

  So I agree with that. And I think the, the Mark Gurman first reported this for Bloomberg and the, and the thing that he said is this is a step in the direction of doing foldables, right? You basically take two thin ones and fold it and that's how you get a foldable iPhone and iPad that works. That I find compelling. Sure. I think if you were to make a list of how do you make the iPhone better? I honestly believe make it thinner is like not in the top 25. Like, no one thinks their iPhone is too thick. And everybody puts their iPhone in a case. So you're going to take your slim iPhone, you're going to put it in a case that is going to make it A, thicker and B, not show off the supposed sexiness, slimness of the thing.

• 1:18:33David Pierce?

  It just doesn't make any sense to me. Like, this just feels like it's purely a thing you're doing because you can. And that's fine. Like, if, if Apple was like, look, we made the iPhone 17, it's thinner than ever before. I'd be like, neat, thinner than before. But to, to take this out of the lineup and brand it as its own new thing, I just think is absurd. Like, I don't care. And my real issue is this this portends a future in which the iPhone Air Pro Max is a thing that exists and I cannot.

• 1:19:07Speaker 07

  No, it's coming.

• 1:19:07David Pierce?

  I can't do it. If that phone exists, I'm switching to Android, just on principle. I think I will not. I will not live in a world where the iPhone Air Pro Max exists.

• 1:19:17Speaker 07

  And we've heard it at every single iPhone reveal event that they've ever had. Whenever they reveal one, whenever they release one, they always say that it's thinner. Maybe it's a little thinner, maybe it's a lot thinner. And there are a certain number of people who say, I just want an iPhone that lasts two days on the charge. I don't want the iPhone Air. I just want the iPhone two day. I don't have to plug it in for two days.

• 1:19:35David Pierce?

  Make all the other parts smaller, make the battery bigger, change nothing else. And you will, you will, like, you want an upgrade super cycle? I honestly believe that's how you get it. Like, everyone with an iPhone that is older than, let's say, two models would upgrade to that. If it was like, oh, you'll go from your battery lasting until 4:00 PM to three days. Like, boom. That's, that's the upgrade.

• 1:19:58Speaker 07

  That's the thing, like, on the third day, like, you get through the two days, you go to sleep, you wake up, and it still has charge.

• 1:20:02David Pierce?

  Yeah, like, at, at, at work on day three is when you charge your phone. Like, sold. That's, that's the thing. And for some reason, phone companies refuse to test this theory. It drives me nuts.

• 1:20:14Speaker 07

  They just won't do it.

• 1:20:15David Pierce?

  No, they're just like, it has to be thinner. I'm like, it doesn't. It just doesn't. Like, my phone is thin enough. I'm, I'm so sure of that fact. And if you make it thinner, people just put bigger cases on it because they'll think it's more fragile and so they'll, they'll go buy Otter boxes for it and will be nowhere. This drives me absolutely insane.

• 1:20:31Speaker 07

  The problem is that Apple is actually owned by Big Otter Box. It's a great conspiracy. That's what's going on here. We're gonna cover it. It's like, it's like the Big Short, but phone cases. I've never actually seen the Big Short.

• 1:20:43David Pierce?

  It's the mortgage-backed securities of the tech industry. It's just phone cases.

• 1:20:50David Pierce?

  $200 phone cases that don't do anything. It's actually not the worst metaphor, but I can't. We can't even do that. There's some Tubi news this week. I know you love Tubi news, Richard. One thing people always say to me is, Richard seems like a Tubi guy.

• 1:21:06Speaker 07

  Never once used it, but I like it.

• 1:21:08David Pierce?

  Well, I think there's a decent chance you're going to in a few weeks for the first time. Because the news this week was that Super Bowl 59, it's 59 this year, right? Is going to be streaming for free on Tubi, which I actually think is a pretty big deal. Because Tubi is a free streaming service that doesn't even require you to have an account. Like it's, it's, it's one of the fast channel ones. And its whole thing is it's a big sort of scale based, advertising based platform. So you can just like Google a show and click on it on Google and start watching the show.

• 1:21:39Speaker 07

  Which I think is a That happens a surprising amount with things that I want to watch. It turns out they're on Tubi, just they're like, yeah, you could watch it for free right now. Oh, thanks.

• 1:21:47David Pierce?

  Tubi's library, if you, if you think kind of like B-list shows and below, Tubi has as good a library as anybody. And especially like if you really love like three generations ago, like the, the shows our parents grew up watching are like all over Tubi.

• 1:22:05Speaker 07

  They're, they're there. The ones that you think are nowhere, turns out they have them. There was this movie that I saw the other day, Baby Assassins. It's on Tubi, it's a great Japanese movie. If you love action, good. I did not watch it on Tubi, but it is there.

• 1:22:18David Pierce?

  Totally. And I should say, I actually, I got one thing wrong. You will need an account to watch the Super Bowl on Tubi. I just, I just caught this looking this up right now. Which is very interesting because part of Tubi's whole thing is that you don't need an account. And we talked about this a little bit in a thing we're doing on the Vergecast on Tuesday about Venue. But Fox, which owns Tubi, doesn't have a like premium streaming service of its own. And one very compelling thing to do when you have the Super Bowl is try and use it to get people to sign up for your streaming service. Because it is the Super Bowl and that's a very good thing to do. So Fox doesn't have that move.

• 1:22:57David Pierce?

  There's no like Fox Plus that they can try to get you to pay 10 bucks for and then forget about and keep doing like Comcast can do with NBC and Peacock or CBS can do with Paramount Plus. So Tubi is the move, but they can't charge you for Tubi. So this is clearly just a like, they're making a big play just to get people into this ecosystem.

• 1:23:14Speaker 07

  Well, the last time Fox had the Super Bowl, they ran an ad where Tubi took over the stream and people it like ripped over the, over the screen and made it seem like you were watching Tubi instead of watching the Super Bowl.

• 1:23:24David Pierce?

  Oh, that's right. That's the one where like the, the interface came up, right? And everybody was like, what is suddenly controlling my smart TV?

• 1:23:31Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:23:32David Pierce?

  Such a good idea.

• 1:23:33Speaker 07

  So they really are using this to, to promote Tubi and it's, it's there. Of course you could use an antenna, which you have, I'm sure, I'm sure you do. I'm sure everyone has an antenna to watch free TV. Um, but if you don't, then there's Tubi.

• 1:23:47David Pierce?

  Yeah. A, antennas are great. I didn't get one for a very long time because I was like, this is probably complicated. Turns out it's not. You can buy it on Amazon and set it up in like a minute and a half and it's a super good idea and it works way better than you think. Uh, it's very ugly and you have to stick it to your window most of the time, uh, but works super well. But also, yeah, I think, uh, it's going to be really interesting to see how Tubi does with this because I'm willing to bet that, uh, Tubi, a, a service that is not necessarily known for having like destination appointment viewing,

• 1:24:18David Pierce?

  is going to have some, some traffic spikes that it has never really reckoned with before. Uh, and during that, during the Super Bowl is a bold strategy.

• 1:24:27David Pierce?

  So we'll see. Um, all right. Couple more that we should get to. Explain to me what's going on with Drake. Uh, I have, I, I confess to you, I have avoided following this thing because it's just a bunch of shenanigans, uh, but there were new shenanigans this week. What is Drake doing now?

• 1:24:42Speaker 07

  So you may have heard that, uh, Kendrick Lamar made a song about Drake last year, in which he accused him of some things that you probably don't want to be accused of.

• 1:24:52David Pierce?

  Kendrick Lamar won the beef, right? Like we all agree that they were beefing and Kendrick Lamar sort of resoundingly defeated Drake.

• 1:24:58Speaker 07

  Well, Kendrick Lamar was, had a free concert in LA where he was dancing on stage with NBA players as they all called Drake a pedophile. So yeah, I think so.

• 1:25:07David Pierce?

  I think that is what winning looks like.

• 1:25:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, by, by most definitions.

• 1:25:12David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:12Speaker 07

  But Drake and Kendrick Lamar are on the same label, um, Universal Music Group. And Drake has turned his ire toward the label, um, Spotify to some extent and others. And so he had filed this legal petition a couple of months ago. Kind of looking for information, saying and accusing the label of certain things that they were doing illegal things to promote the Not Like Us song by Kendrick, payola to DJs and people to put it on playlists, using bots to drive up the view numbers on YouTube and the streaming numbers on Spotify. And so now he has, he pulled one legal petition that was against UMG and Spotify and filed a federal lawsuit against UMG, saying that the song is defamatory, number one, that

• 1:25:56Speaker 07

  it's not true, the accusations in it are not true, and that Universal knows they're not true because otherwise they wouldn't be in business with him, or they could have just called him and asked him if they're true, which he would say that they are not.

• 1:26:06David Pierce?

  That's quite a phone call. Like, hey, Kendrick's about to put out a song, we have some questions for you.

• 1:26:10Speaker 07

  And accusing them of doing all these things to promote it, claiming that this was done to kind of affect their negotiations with him on his record deal and to affect negotiations with Kendrick on his record deal, and that they would have all of these things. But now, yeah, there is a lawsuit in federal court over a rap beef, saying that the song is defamatory, which, if you make a diss track about someone, it probably is defamatory. If it isn't, you did it wrong. But legally, I don't know what that means for the future of this lawsuit, but I find it interesting that he's not, it's not like he's suing Kendrick or anything, he's suing specifically Universal, claiming that they did all of these things that would be probably illegal to promote the track.

• 1:26:53Speaker 07

  Also, things that people believe labels do to promote songs.

• 1:26:56David Pierce?

  Yeah, the idea of like using bots to juice plays and payola and all that stuff is like, those are the kinds of things that are kind of open secrets in a lot of parts of the music industry. I have no evidence on this particular one, or UMG, or whatever, but like, it is a thing that happens, and people talk about it pretty openly as a thing that happens.

• 1:27:15Speaker 07

  And that is what Drake's lawsuit says, so I guess we're kind of going to see where that goes. But curiously, you know, he's not suing Spotify or iHeartRadio, who had been named in the previous kind of things that he put out, or at least not yet. This lawsuit is just against his, like,

• 1:27:30David Pierce?

  Interesting.

• 1:27:31Speaker 07

  Who he is still signed to.

• 1:27:33David Pierce?

  I would, I would ask you if this was like a Streisand effect thing, where all he was doing was making it bigger, but I feel like... Not like us does not need help. Yeah. That song, that song has platformed itself pretty successfully, I would say. All right, one more, and then we're gonna get out of here. Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos's rocket company, successfully launched New Glenn, its, its big rocket. I think that was on, was that today, Thursday?

• 1:28:02Speaker 07

  That was today. That was Thursday morning.

• 1:28:04David Pierce?

  Super early this morning. It was like 2 o'clock in the morning.

• 1:28:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, Monday morning was the first attempt, but it has now launched and parts of it went into orbit.

• 1:28:12David Pierce?

  This seems like a big deal, right? For a couple of reasons. One, because this company has had a lot of money and a lot of, I would say, almosts and kind of falsish starts over the years. They've been at this for like a decade. But then also because i- if this continues, Blue Origin becomes real competition to SpaceX for kind of the first time. Like SpaceX is still pretty far ahead in all of this and has been doing this for a very long time and is very good at this. But the idea of just there being another company meaningfully in this race seems pretty interesting to me.

• 1:28:49Speaker 07

  Particularly as they're trying to do the reusable rocket thing that SpaceX does and that others don't yet. Even the ESA just started launching a new rocket, but it doesn't have the reusable boosters and stuff like that, because that really helps you get the price down on the launches, which is a key to SpaceX's business model. And right now, for all of these companies, and there are a lot of companies that are interested in launching stuff into orbit, Starlink, SpaceX Starlink being one of them, but also many others, including Jeff Bezos's own Amazon and the Kuiper satellite internet satellite constellation that they're trying to build. You need to be able to launch stuff a lot. And to get it up there and having reusable rockets that work is a big part of it. Doing work that they want to do for NASA is a big part of having these reusable rockets going to the moon.

• 1:29:33Speaker 07

  As Elon Musk says that he wants to go to Mars, if you can get there. But you gotta have it. And they have had so many delays. I think this was supposed to be launched in 2020. But now it has launched. It mostly worked. They didn't get the rocket returned, but I think that was, you know, kind of a secondary goal. And so they're gonna try that on future flights.

• 1:29:52David Pierce?

  Yeah, it again, kind of illustrates how far behind. They really are, but also how much progress they've made that like it's I forget this occasionally. And it's nice to be reminded that just launching a rocket into space is very hard. And kind of a big deal when you can do it from scratch. There's a lot more to do. The landing thing is hard. SpaceX is out here like catching it with chopsticks. Like, there's a lot of work left to do to catch up to what SpaceX is up to. But this is, this is a huge step. And I think the more I've talked to people in the kind of private space industry, the more, the more I get the sense that there's a real kind of rising tide moment happening where a lot of people are leaving SpaceX who know how to do this stuff and they're starting new companies.

• 1:30:36David Pierce?

  And there's more stuff being done and the technology is becoming more kind of commoditized and available. And like the acceleration of the competition in this space might start to happen pretty fast. In the same way that like Tesla had a commanding lead for a long time. And then everybody kind of all at once, in part because of a lot of people who left Tesla, also learned how to make electric cars, that there's a real sense that the same thing is going to start to happen in the kind of private, commercial space industry, which I think is very cool. Just as somebody who really likes watching two hour long launch videos, like the one that, that Blue Origin put out today. I would just like more of those. That's all I need.

• 1:31:12Speaker 07

  And it's all controlled by the same few tech billionaires slash oligarchs.

• 1:31:17David Pierce?

  Yeah, they all have the same plan. It's get a lot of money and then launch internet into space. Sure. It's, it's fine. It is what it is.

• 1:31:25Speaker 07

  It's what I'd do.

• 1:31:27David Pierce?

  I mean, it kind of is, right? Like at some point you have so much money, what are you going to do except launch rockets? Or do the, the other Bezos thing, which is like, what if I made a clock that lasts forever? And like, perfect rich guy brain, like that, that's it, Jeff. You did rich guy brain. Crush it. Bill Gates is like, what if I cured all diseases? And Jeff Bezos is like, clock that goes always. All right, Jeff. Godspeed, my friend. All right, Richard, we have gone way over. It's time for us to go. Thank you for being here. This has been a delight. Neelai is no longer invited back to the show. He's off being fancy and he can stay off being fancy as far as I'm concerned.

• 1:32:06David Pierce?

  There's so much more to happen here. I'm so tired. It's the middle of January. The TikTok ban may or may not happen on Sunday. Inauguration is on Monday. There's all kinds of news and tech stuff. There's like, I learned recently, I live in DC and all the tech CEOs are here like partying around the inauguration, which is bizarre in ways that I'm not really prepared to reckon with. A lot's happening. We have a show on Tuesday that I will just tell everybody, we have mostly already recorded because it's a holiday weekend, so we want to give people some time off. We'll have some updates. We're going to talk a lot more about this next week and the week after. And God help us forever and ever. But for now, Richard, thank you. Thank you as always. That's the Vergecast. Rock and roll.

• 1:32:51Speaker 10

  And that's it for the Vergecast this week. And hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-VERGE11. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Will Poor, Eric Gomez, and Brandon Kiefer. And that's it. We'll see you next week.

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