Facebook announces Libra, Section 230 threatened, and RCS in the hands of Google

Paul Miller explains Facebook new cryptocurrency Libra, Adi Robertson explains Senator Josh Hawley's move to amend Section 230, and Dieter explains how Google is taking charge of RCS. Stories discussed this week: Samsung accidentally makes the case for not owning a smart TV GE accidentally makes the case for not owning smart GE bulbs A paper towel dispenser with an end-user license agreement is a special kind of hellFacebook's Calibra is a secret weapon for monetizing its new .. Facebook confirms it will launch a cryptocurrency called Libra in 2020 …Internet giants must stay unbiased to keep their biggest legal shield Both parties are mad about a proposal for federal anti-bias certification Microsoft and Kano are launching a build-your-own Windows 10 PC kitGoogle is taking charge of RCSUsing secure chat is a moral imperative, and iMessage is my bestCyberpunk 2077 doesn't look weird enough to be edgy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  Company spend can be complicated. Managing it shouldn't be. Amex Corporate connects cards, expenses, and payments all in one place. That's less time managing work and more time doing work that matters. Built to simplify, designed to scale. This is Amex Corporate. Get started at go.amex slash amexcorporate. Terms apply.

• 0:57Nilay Patel?

  On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about Facebook's new Libra cryptocurrency, Senator Josh Hawley's move to amend Section 230, and what is going on with RCS. Dieter actually has a lot of emotions about that. That's The Vergecast coming up now.

• 1:12Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge Podcast Situation. At this point, what we're trying to do with The Vergecast, by the way, is just have as many of them as possible in one week. That's my, that's my new strategy. We're gonna set a record? I think this is a record. We had three this week. Anyway, I'm Eli. I'm your friend. Paul Miller is here.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 1:32Nilay Patel?

  Dieter is here.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  I wish that there was a top-level domain that was Hoopla, so we could say that we're the flagship podcast of theverge.hoopla.

• 1:40Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. I feel like your dream can come true. You just gotta start a country whose acronym is. Perfect. H-O. Addie Robertson is here. Hi, Addie. Hi. There's a, there's a lot going on this week. A lot of heavy stuff. Some Section 230 things going on. Someone sang us a song. We're gonna play. This is a true story. Someone sang me a Section 230 song on Twitter. So we'll play that later. Look out for that. Facebook launched a cryptocurrency. I'm gonna just tell the listener this. Paul won't tell us what he thinks, but he just keeps laughing and saying, "Just you wait." So I'm very eager to find out what is in Paul's brain. I saw some tweets. But two things I want to point out. One, we published a gigantic story this week from Casey Newton about Facebook moderators at a contracting facility in Tampa, Florida.

• 2:25Nilay Patel?

  You might have seen in the feed, Casey and I did an entire episode about that story. So listen to that. We're not gonna talk about it here, because we, Casey, we already had Casey on the show. We talked about it at length. And then we also ran Casey's interview of Adam Mosser from Instagram and Andrew Bosworth from Facebook at Code earlier this week. So we've already had two episodes. This is the third one. Let me know if that's too many. I didn't want to not give people the show they expect on Tuesday with the interview, and we'd already promised it, so we did it. And then the Casey story hit, and I thought that was really important. I wanted to give it some space. Like I said, we're trying more things. Let me know how you feel about it. But that Casey story is really important. I encourage you to read it. Three moderators actually went on the record with us, and they allowed us to shoot video of them talking about what it's like to moderate Facebook.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  So please watch that. That's on our YouTube channel. Listen to that podcast. Read the story. It's all there. Okay. That's, that's that stuff. But now, we gotta talk about Calibra and Libra from Facebook. We gotta talk about Josh Hawley's bill to do something. Something? Addie made a face. We're gonna talk about that. We got a lot of stuff to talk about. But I want to start with something much sillier, some gadget news, in its way, which is that we, as a, as a society, have decided that we should put computers in everything. Yes. And then now, everything has computer problems. Like, classic 90s computer problems. And so I just want to start with Samsung tweeting this week that everyone with a Samsung

• 3:51Nilay Patel?

  Smart TV should periodically dig through the menus and launch the virus scanner on their television. Yeah. Now, I didn't know, this is true, by the way. They tweeted this with a video, like a how-to video, like, "Your TV is a computer, too. Make sure you periodically check it for viruses," and then like, click through the menus and show the thing. It was hilarious. The whole internet laughed at it. We wrote about it. And then, they deleted the tweet. Yeah. Which implies that maybe looking for viruses on your TV is perhaps not more important than dealing with the shame of tweeting about it. You'd rather have your customers suffer viruses. Than get dunked on Twitter. Yeah. Okay, if you have a virus scanner on your computer, presumably you believe that it itself

• 4:36Nilay Patel?

  won't get infected and so when it runs occasionally, it will be able to properly look for viruses.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  Like, who watches The Watchmen?

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  Exactly. So, why not just like, run it? Like, when the TV is off, it's probably still getting power, all these smart TVs do. Why not just, as soon as someone like, turns off the TV at night, just like, wait 10 minutes, make sure they're not coming back, and then just do it for them? And then tell us if there's a problem, but otherwise, just do it. Why not just do it?

• 5:02Speaker 04

  Why don't borrow the Microsoft model? What if you're in like, a really good last third of a TV show you're really enjoying, and then it like, exits fullscreen and runs it? How about that?

• 5:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, look, Samsung TVs will happily, you know, update the advertising that they show, they'll do random app updates, they'll re, I mean, they're computers. Why not, why not run the virus scanner? You get the feeling that like, they added the virus scanner, they thought it'd be fun, and then someone's like, "We should tell people about this virus scanner." Because I don't, like, there's a lot of ties in TVs out there. Samsung sells a lot of TVs. I just don't think like-

• 5:37Speaker 04

  You think it was fun?

• 5:39Nilay Patel?

  I just don't think-

• 5:40Speaker 04

  Like, an Easter egg?

• 5:41Nilay Patel?

  The people, like, can you imagine like, the cool cyber criminal hangout? And they're like, "All right, you, iOS, big target, gotta find some Zero Days, you know, Windows 10, gotta stay ahead of Microsoft, that's a huge attack surface." You, you go in the basement and write the Tyson virus.

• 5:57Speaker 05

  Look, I would like to say that literally the CIA thought this was important enough to do.

• 6:01Nilay Patel?

  That's true. They did, right? They did a thing where they could attack it and turn the microphones on?

• 6:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, they, there's an exploit.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  But didn't you have to be local?

• 6:08Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 6:09Nilay Patel?

  Right. So if the CIA has been in your house, this is very important, the CIA has been in your home, run the virus scanner. That must have been when they wrote the virus scanner.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, probably.

• 6:19Speaker 05

  It would make sense.

• 6:20Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, just deeply funny. I just think that the trade-off of, "This was embarrassing, so we did, we did the tweet, and now people may not know about the virus scanner that we think they should run," is, that's a lot.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  Anyway.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, it's no end user license agreement on a, a, a paper towel dispenser.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  James Vincent wrote this story. Uh, there's a paper towel dispenser in the world that, uh, is only licensed to use Torque, T O R K, uh, branded paper towels, uh, and it will spit out a little receipt that tells you so, because it has a, it has terms of service. That's too much. You should just go look at that picture and think about where we are as a, like a human civilization.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Dieter, do you want to talk about the light bulbs? This is like the third silly one this week of these.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  So.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  GE felt like it needed to make smart light bulbs, so it did. And everything that, you know, has a computer needs to be able to be factory reset, right? Cause you just, you want that. And they, they made a method for it. And then they're like, wait, this method is stupid. Let's make a different method for it. And they made it just as stupid. And their method was you like turn it off and then turn it on for two seconds and then turn it off for eight seconds and then turn it on and then turn it off. And you repeat that some number of times, but instead of just describing this process to you and say, repeat it three times, they have you watch a YouTube video because that's how all how to content has to be delivered now. That's the law. Where they just, they like tell you to do it. So like, the idea is you're going to be sitting there with your phone, watching it and they're like,

• 7:45Speaker 03

  turn it on, turn it off. But watching it out of that context, it's just the most dystopian thing ever. It's just a silent video with some, you know, tinkling music in the background and a person saying, turn it on.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  So there's 11 steps of this, right?

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Turn it on.

• 8:01Speaker 04

  We could go through all of them and it would take too long and be painful.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  Turn it off.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  There's a, there's 11 steps which, which implies that

• 8:09Speaker 03

  Turn it on.

• 8:09Speaker 04

  10 or fewer of these steps were possible that they could happen randomly.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  They didn't want false positives.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  Uh oh, those dumb kids always flipping.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  This is exactly what Dan Seifert said, is kids will just flip light switches all the time and they didn't want that to happen. That's his theory. No, no, it's totally, I believe that theory completely. But my suggestion to all future smart home gadget makers is you have a checklist. All right, is there Wi-Fi? Do we need it? Yeah, okay, is there Bluetooth? Yeah, is there Thread? Nobody uses Thread, we don't need that. But I go down the list, and at the end of the list is, how is it factory reset? And then ask yourself what kind of YouTube video you're going to have to make for the factory reset.

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  Can I just clarify the change? The old firmware had you turn it on and off 13 times. The new firmware has you do it 11 times.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  And you had to sit there and count it, because they didn't just tell you.

• 9:03Nilay Patel?

  It's pretty good. Yeah, they should just have a button, I think is the answer. Buttons are good.

• 9:07Speaker 05

  Catchy pattern, shaving a haircut, two bits.

• 9:09Nilay Patel?

  Oh, there you go. Is that eight seconds?

• 9:13Speaker 05

  Doesn't have to be eight seconds, you just need to...

• 9:15Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see. Oh, well, you flip the switch, I get it. That's pretty good. What if your kids are like extremely rhythmic?

• 9:23Speaker 05

  Then that's good, it's a reward.

• 9:25Nilay Patel?

  It's a reward. My children are a barber shop quartet.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  They keep doing shaving and haircut.

• 9:32Nilay Patel?

  All right. Let's, Paul?

• 9:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:34Nilay Patel?

  That's enough fun stuff. Let's talk about how Mark Zuckerberg is gonna completely upend the global financial system. So this has been public for a long time. Facebook had a huge reorg, and Kevin Weill, who's in charge of products Instagram, moved over to start a blockchain division of Facebook. So they're clearly gonna do something. On Tuesday, they announced what that something is, which is a cryptocurrency called Libra. It is controlled by a 27-member consortium located in Switzerland.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  A cabal.

• 10:04Nilay Patel?

  A cabal, that includes like Visa and Mastercard and Stripe, like a bunch of companies. No banks, notably no banks are involved in this. That will be, Facebook insists, like, we're just one voting member of this, even though they're the ones who built it. And Facebook is building a wallet for its currency called Calibra. That will be, that's the Facebook product. And presumably be able to like pay for stuff around Facebook with it.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  And that's a subsidiary of Facebook and also a voting member. So I think Facebook ends up with two votes.

• 10:32Nilay Patel?

  See, see, see?

• 10:34Speaker 03

  In the cabal.

• 10:35Nilay Patel?

  Mark Zuckerberg.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's two out of like 22.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  And they hoped to, they claimed to hope to have a hundred in the, in the Libra Association by launch.

• 10:45Nilay Patel?

  So I'm Paul, I hate to keep people from hearing what you have to, I'm dying to hear what you have to say. But just to finish it out, a thing that is true is that Facebook announced this thing, it was a big deal. They said a bunch of stuff about how they want to work with governments and regulators. And then literally politicians around the world were like, wait, no, don't do that. Right? So like Maxine Waters, who's like the House Banking Committee, she was like, I want a moratorium on this product until I can hold hearings. The Finance Minister of France was like, this seems like another sovereign currency. No, we can't have that. And a big distinction between your Bitcoins and this Facebook product is like Bitcoins are not classed as a currency because there's no one controlling it.

• 11:29Nilay Patel?

  It's like an asset, but this has this like Swiss Illuminati situation that is deciding what other currencies they'll peg it to. So it's a big thing. And so I was tweeting that like, it seems like Facebook was unprepared for this massive regulatory backlash. And there's a debate and I've heard from some smart folks that Facebook was anticipating this backlash. And effectively they left avenues of attack open that they think they can depend. And you have to really believe Facebook is playing 4D chess with the world financial system, which is, I think, very interesting. So there's, they made this big announcement and there's already this immediate sort of like global, we don't want Facebook to control our currency backlash.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know about like 40 chess, but there is definitely, and throughout all of their language and in their quote unquote white paper and stuff. Like they very much talk about how willing they are to work with regulators. And obviously as opposed to something like Bitcoin, which is not controlled by any one person. It has a vector for control by regulators, you know, the, so, so this is a, a currency. I, I don't really think of it as a cryptocurrency. Also, very interestingly, the actual data structure underlying it is not a blockchain.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  Because as something that, and full disclosure on my part, I'm a huge Bitcoin fan. So you should just know that about me. Something that Bitcoin people point out a lot is that most uses of blockchain, if it's a centrally controlled thing, blockchain is an inefficiency, really. And so, what you really want is just a high-speed, high-access database, because it's centrally controlled. And so, in this case, they issue a currency. This Libra Association issues this currency and it's backed by a basket of assets. And so ideally, there'll be some sort of one-to-one peg, where when you pay in 10 US dollars to get 10 Libra,

• 13:24Speaker 04

  they add 10 US, something like, something equivalent to 10 US dollars to that basket of assets to back the Libra that you've purchased. But of course, if you're holding a basket of assets, it's obviously centralized, because you're not going to have, like, you know, a whole, like, you can't globally distribute that or decentralize the holding of money in that way.

• 13:49Nilay Patel?

  But so Paul, let me see if I understand. I'm going to try to say it to see if I understand it. You can tell me if I'm wrong. So with a regular currency or a bank, you centralize it and you can move things around faster because you own the database. And then all the trust is in the bank. Like you, as the person holding the currency, trust the government or the bank that it's going to be there. With Bitcoin, it's trustless, right? So there's this blockchain that anybody can read. And so the inefficiency is that you don't need trust in a single entity, right?

• 14:18Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 14:19Nilay Patel?

  Right, I'm just making sure I have this right. So you're saying Facebook is like the Libra Foundation is the thing that you trust? And so they've built it on that model?

• 14:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, like one way to think about it is like, how long does it take like a few people to like, like, let's pick a random word out of the dictionary and get a few people to agree which word you picked? You know, so like I picked elephant. Okay, five people, we all, it's very easy for us to communicate amongst ourselves and decide that. But if you're in a huge room with like a thousand people, how quickly can you get that information, everybody in that room to all agree to that same thing? Other than just going on stage and announcing it over the loudspeaker, which is... Centralization. So if you want high throughput shared decision making, you either want centralization or you're screwed. And so what's so it's interesting is,

• 15:13Speaker 04

  I don't know, Bitcoin people are so stoked on Libra and I couldn't even like quite figure it out myself and I don't really know, but it's sort of like Facebook spent billions of dollars, probably, I don't know how much money in time they've spent developing this. They developed something I don't think is as good as Bitcoin on technical merits. And it doesn't have most of the good properties that people go to Bitcoin for, other than like being a stable coin, if that's what you want. But it also has this aspect where it makes any, like a lot of the alternatives to Bitcoin look really silly because they are centralized and they're using blockchain

• 15:53Speaker 04

  as like a window dressing. They're saying, hey, look at us, we're a decentralized cryptocurrency, but really they actually are just as centralized as something like Libra. And then also simultaneously, Facebook is going as like a full on challenge against like central banks. So they're saying, we want to be a privately held, global central bank that issues its own currency.

• 16:18Nilay Patel?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 16:20Speaker 04

  Meanwhile, Bitcoin can sit back, well, we're not trying to do that. We're not trying to be that. And but at the same time, you know, Libra kind of makes central banks look silly because as far as I know, they actually, you know, Libra's currency is actually backed by something. It's backed by fiat currencies, but at least it's backed by something.

• 16:37Nilay Patel?

  That makes no sense.

• 16:41Nilay Patel?

  Libra is backed by more imaginary ideas. Like, of course, that's all, that's all anything is backed by. We agree that this is a unit of exchange.

• 16:48Speaker 05

  So does the Libra Association control who can process currency through this, the way that say, credit card processing companies can refuse to deal with organizations?

• 16:57Speaker 04

  As far as I know, they have full control over what is written to the database or the non-blockchain blockchain of Libra. So to join the association, it's $10 million and that allows you to run a validating node, which is like something like I run my own Bitcoin node. I just have like a random server I bought off of Newegg for like $200 and I validate the Bitcoin blockchain myself at home. But to do that in the, with the Facebook model, and I think partly to keep high throughput, but also for, for their trust model and to be able to accommodate the wishes of regulators and to basically have a blockchain or have a database that they can change the records of, they have a very small set of people running these nodes.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  So here's my like big question. If it's not a blockchain, what is it? It's a Byzantine fault tolerant data structure. I don't know. It's hard to describe. Doesn't that literally describe blockchain? No, it's very different. Blockchain is also a Byzantine fault tolerant data structure. I mean, so here's, here's, here's one way to put it. Google.com is a crypto website because it's backed by a distributed database. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, like when I, when I go to Google.com, I use all sorts of cryptography and a consensus algorithms and stuff like that. But what is interesting about Bitcoin is that it's also permissionless, which this

• 18:26Speaker 04

  does not have the aspect of being permissionless. Right. And they say they can switch it over to be permissionless, right? They, they hope to. One of the things is so there's this concept of proof of stake. This is something that Ethereum has been trying to do for, for a long time. So Bitcoin is famously backed by proof of work, which is a very energy intensive, high computation, some would say wasteful. Computers are working very hard to verify the Bitcoin blockchain through proof of work. Proof of stake just is more like I'm betting that this blockchain hasn't been hacked. And so because you create, I don't really understand proof of stake. And partly, the problem is, is nobody's actually solved proof of stake and has it like

• 19:09Speaker 04

  working in a big, important cryptocurrency. So Ethereum's working towards it. And so I think similarly, the Libra Association's claims to be working on proof of stake. And then they hope to maybe move Libra to permissionless eventually. That is a very big pie in the sky claim. Basically hoping to invent the technology and then also get rid of all of their selfish interests that are currently involved in this, so that they can relinquish it to the community.

• 19:41Nilay Patel?

  When I think of solving problems that have never been solved before, I think of 27 company consortiums in Switzerland. Truly, that's, that's the way to go. Do you think this, we've talked a lot about Bitcoin compared to Ethereum?

• 19:54Speaker 04

  Well, so Ethereum has the, the whole concept of, of smart contracts. It has a compute, a whole computer language and you can run more complicated applications on it and you can make more elaborate ICOs and which are not really doing very well right now. So there is a, a smart contracting language for Libra. Bitcoin also has a smart contracting language. It's just not typically called that and it's very simple and minimal. So Libra has something called Move and so they wrote their currency in, in this language called Move. And so theoretically, they can do more things with, with Move. But for now, developers don't have access to making applications with the Move language.

• 20:36Speaker 04

  And, and as far as I know, they're only doing the currency with it. So they might open up more, more of the sort of Ethereum style utilities, but, but they haven't. But at all that said, like Ethereum, I think of, and, and this is something where again, this is coming from a, a big, big Bitcoin believer. So take that, take that as you will, but Ethereum has some problems with centralization. And so I do think, and also was it, or no EOS? Yeah, EOS also is another smart contracty blockchain type thing that also. So has a lot of has something closer to this Libra model of having sort of a consortium

• 21:15Speaker 04

  of validating nodes and those could feel the heat if Libra does what they do and it does it better and the centralization is the same if I'm correct about the centralization being the same then that could be a problem for those blockchains.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  So I think the technical details here are really interesting and like deeply fascinating and that sort of like regulators are mad because you've created a new global bank that issues currency, which again, most governments don't like it when you do that to them. So we'll just like see how that goes. But on the consumer side of things, like Facebook has Messenger, they have WhatsApp, they have Instagram private messages. They're just gonna light it up and say now you can pay your friends, right? And you have to do it in like Disney dollars or whatever instead of real money. And that's just gonna is that just gonna like the problem with all the other stuff, there's no killer app for Bitcoin, right? Like people aren't really except for that one family Vox wrote about them this week. There's like one family that sold all their assets and now travels around the world on Bitcoin or like

• 22:15Nilay Patel?

  there's like that there's those folks, but this is just going to be a transactional platform for Facebook and instant scale.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  Right. Well, so Bitcoin talks a lot about the the unbanked. Some of their examples are like remittance is a big thing. So there is an aspect that even though we have these centralized banks that theoretically could be running on really streamlined, fast and secure databases because they are centralized. They're really bad and slow. And so there's a lot like banks could either get better or they will, I think, be disrupted by either Bitcoin or something like Libra. So like, you know, like Western Union or like payday loans. Like I think that's something that Facebook sees it itself competing with, and I think they could actually compete pretty effectively with. And then they also talk a lot about like people who do not have access to traditional banking for whatever

• 23:07Speaker 04

  reasons, banking has not come to them. And so if Libra works better for those people, I think that's, I mean, I think that's great. I think that's some of the cool stuff that that's happened also with Bitcoin. Like a lot of people, if they if they're in a country and their currency is going bad, they want to, they really kind of want to get on US dollars, but maybe their government makes that hard or maybe the US government makes that hard for them to be on US dollars. If it's easier on Libra or it's easier on Bitcoin, I think they will go to those.

• 23:38Nilay Patel?

  I just feel like there's something inherently scary about I'm in a country. You know, the government's topsy turvy, the money's gone bad. I'm gonna put all my assets against my Facebook password. Just feels just riskier than I want it to, right?

• 23:52Speaker 04

  Of course, it's risky. It's not ideal. But I think, you know, if that, if you don't have any alternatives, if Facebook makes it easier to buy Libra than it is for you to buy US dollars or Bitcoin, then I think Facebook wins in that situation.

• 24:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't, there's, there's just a part of this where it's such a, it's such a moment of for Facebook to not have the trust it needs to do something like this. And they're, they're barreling ahead with it. And like, that is, I think it's shared Brown in Congress was like, Facebook is already too powerful. Why would we give them our money? And like, that's just, that's gonna set up a series of hearings and inquisitions that they're gonna have to deal with.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  Well, it also seems like the big thing is going to be outs, it's going to be in all the companies that are the countries that use Facebook for internet. It's like the US, it has implications, but it seems like it's really scary when you get to places that already where Facebook is the internet. And now Facebook's also your money.

• 24:46Nilay Patel?

  Right. And those are, but what is it? Facebook Internet?

• 24:48Speaker 05

  Internet.org?

• 24:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like Facebook runs a non-neutral internet for people where Facebook services are free and everything else costs money.

• 24:57Speaker 04

  Like, at some point, Facebook is most of your government, right?

• 25:01Nilay Patel?

  This is what I'm saying. Eventually there'll be one company and then we'll merge it with the government and that'll be great.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  And then Bitcoin will take it out.

• 25:07Speaker 05

  But then Facebook also wants an external Supreme Court, so then they're going to set up a government to run Facebook.

• 25:12Nilay Patel?

  A shadow, well, they've already set up the Libra consortium. So then the, the real government of the world is called Libra. I mean, this is already a YA novel. Like, I don't know what we're doing, sitting here, talking about this when we could be writing our YA novel and making this money right now. It's, it's right there for you. It is real life. By the way, Paul, your point about energy consumption, Mary Beth, Greg's, our science editor, wrote a piece. It does appear that Facebook's system will be more energy efficient than Bitcoin. Just a bit pointed notoriously power hungry.

• 25:39Speaker 04

  Right. The counter argument from the Bitcoin perspective is that Bitcoin harnesses what is in a sense sort of like waste energy. It's energy that is sort of geographically locked in a certain location. Bitcoin, you have to use the cheapest electricity to mine competitively. Typically, the cheapest electricity is electricity that is not usable for powering homes in that sense. So while Bitcoin uses a ton of energy, it's not necessarily competing for like the high premium, difficult to get energy. If that makes sense.

• 26:12Nilay Patel?

  It does.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  But as far as how much electricity the two systems use, Facebook's uses way less.

• 26:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I think the, the sort of growing amount of energy Bitcoin is using, because it's not like a flat amount, right? It's like, it's curving up. So I think that.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  The hash rate is actually going up faster than the, um, the US dollar value of Bitcoin.

• 26:34Nilay Patel?

  All of this seems just very much like, maybe we should turn it over to a group of bankers in Switzerland, but.

• 26:41Nilay Patel?

  All right. I gotta say, um, Tom Warren wrote a piece, like the action in banking tech is like very high. Like Apple's coming out with its card with Goldman Sachs. In case you were wondering if you really want to trustworthy bank, that Goldman Sachs, that's the one. Um, but Apple's, Apple's coming out of the card, obviously the Apple card coming out of Goldman Sachs, people are very excited about it. A bunch of British banks are showing up in the US. Tom Warren just wrote a piece about how British banks are far ahead of the curve in many places. There is a lot of action and just sort of payments. And I think this is a reflection of, once again, how big these companies are. They're, they're looking for more ways to just like capture you. And obviously your financial like, like transaction history is like deeply important.

• 27:24Nilay Patel?

  I will say Facebook, you know, their white paper is like, we'll never use this data for anything. It's like, Facebook, you, no one believes you.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  Well, also they, they have this, they do this whole rigmarole. You can have synonymous accounts, right? So you can have multiple accounts on Libra and they don't have to be tied to your identity, right? But to sign up for those accounts, you have to use your identity because of KYC law, like know your customer and anti-money laundering laws. So you, so while your accounts aren't tied to your identity, they are also tied to your identity. And therefore always, everything you ever do with Libra will be exactly traceable to a specific identity.

• 28:06Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Well, Libra's not coming out for a while. We'll see. I mean, and by the way, that $10 million buy-in, a bunch of these companies in the consortium have not even put the money forward yet. Like, they're conditional. So like, many steps to go. There are undoubtedly going to be, I would say, very entertaining government hearings where the United States Congress is going to pretend to know what blockchains are. Get ready for that. That's gonna be great. So, we're gonna cover it closely, but I think we've done enough here. So, we're gonna take a break, and we're gonna come back, and we're talking about whatever is going on. Josh Hawley in Section 230.

• 28:41Speaker 06

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• 29:11Speaker 07

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• 29:42Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're back. Addy, McKenna Kelly wrote a story for us about Senator Hawley's new bill that would drastically change Section 230, which we talk about constantly on this show. It's the law that provides immunity of platform companies from the things their users post. So, once again, I will provide this example. When you look at a Verge webpage, everything that we publish, we're liable for if we get it wrong, and everything in the comments, we are not, because that's user-generated content. So, Section 230 is the law that keeps us from being responsible for user-generated content. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, they're all user-generated content, so they're not liable for what their users post. But they have, 230 gives them the opportunity to moderate that content. And take down the bad stuff. At will, right? I just want to lay this out. That's what 230 says.

• 30:27Speaker 05

  And encourages them to do it.

• 30:28Nilay Patel?

  And it was written so that they would do it. Anyway, there was a writer from Vox, Jane Costin, who tweeted about 230 last night and I retweeted it and I said, "Sing it with me." And a Verge reader sang it for me. Can we, can we just play that right now?

• 30:41Speaker 08

  So show me platforms are not required to be neutral by law. There is no publisher platform distinction by law.

• 30:52Nilay Patel?

  I love you, Jackson Hayes. Just keep that, that's in your heart, right? You've heard the song. Play it one more time.

• 30:57Speaker 08

  So show me platforms are not required to be neutral by law. There is no publisher platform distinction by law.

• 31:08Nilay Patel?

  Okay, that's the law. You understand that's the law?

• 31:10Speaker 04

  Just to be clear, social media platforms are not required to be neutral by law.

• 31:14Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  There is no publisher platform distinction by law. That's the...

• 31:19Nilay Patel?

  That's the song.

• 31:20Speaker 04

  I had to look it up because I have a hard time hearing lyrics, but also that is a beautiful song.

• 31:24Nilay Patel?

  It was beautiful. And again, Jackson, I appreciate you. Thank you for doing that. So that's the laws it stands now. Senator Hawley put out a bill. It's called the Stop Internet Censorship Act.

• 31:33Speaker 05

  No, no, it's called the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act.

• 31:36Nilay Patel?

  Ending support for internet, okay.

• 31:38Speaker 05

  Unlike all the support that we have now for the internet censorship.

• 31:41Nilay Patel?

  So what would this bill do?

• 31:42Speaker 05

  So what it would do is create a class of very large companies. The intent is very large social media companies that would no longer be eligible for Section 230 protections unless they were certified by the FTC and then agreed to not take any action that would discriminate against or suppress political viewpoints.

• 32:07Nilay Patel?

  So they'd have to like file an application, presumably pay for it?

• 32:11Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 32:11Nilay Patel?

  Like pay a fee. And then the FTC, which regulates trade, just putting that out there, would then like vote?

• 32:18Speaker 05

  Yes, I think you, they're trying to create a system where it isn't something that can split purely down partisan lines, but it's still something that they're going to have to vote on.

• 32:26Nilay Patel?

  So the FTC has five commissioners, typically three of the majority party and two of the minority parties. So right now it's three Republicans, two Democrats. You would submit your application and like, you would have to get three Republicans and one Democrat to agree that you are not biased in your moderation.

• 32:42Speaker 05

  Yes, and

• 32:43Speaker 04

  And your application is a moderation policy that you're proposing?

• 32:47Nilay Patel?

  No, it's like proof that you're not doing it.

• 32:49Speaker 04

  How often do you have to prove it?

• 32:51Nilay Patel?

  Every two years.

• 32:52Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 32:53Nilay Patel?

  And if one of your moderators does something that is politically biased, this is my favorite part. You don't lose your protection if you name that person publicly and fire them.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  What?

• 33:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so it's like, how responsible do you want Facebook to be? Just responsible enough to shame its employees if they screw up.

• 33:12Speaker 05

  It's employees that it doesn't directly employ.

• 33:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a lot. So here's the first line. Paragraphs one and two of section 230 shall not imply in the case of a covered company. And that is if you have more than $500 million in revenue or more than 300 million users or 30 million in the US. So that's, you have to Twitter, Facebook, Google. The New York Times, you're saying would have hit that threshold?

• 33:36Speaker 05

  I can't tell. Because the wording they use is just the same wording as 230, which applies to newspapers like the Times. The New York Times company had more than 500 million in revenue. Based on their 2018 numbers and it's an or, it doesn't say they need a certain user threshold. So I'm just not clear why the New York Times comment policy wouldn't fall under this.

• 33:55Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so it's very broad. It says, these parts of section 230 shall not apply in the case of a covered company unless the company has in effect immunity certification from the FTC. That the company does not moderate information provided by other information, by other people in a manner that is biased against a political party, political candidate, or viewpoint. So you have to apply it to get this like immunity from liability for what people post.

• 34:19Speaker 05

  And then Facebook has to repeal its rule against white supremacy.

• 34:22Nilay Patel?

  Right, because white supremacy is a political viewpoint. So basically what this bill would do is it would make Facebook illegal. Right, unless they get this certification. Because there's no way Facebook can operate, or Twitter can operate, or YouTube can operate if they are liable for every single thing that's on their platform. So that's the threat. Right, either you do this or your business model like exposes you to massive liability. Like they will just get sued for everything that happens on their platform and they'll go out of business. So that's

• 34:52Speaker 05

  Or the legal system will go out of business and accelerate court anarchy.

• 34:56Nilay Patel?

  And then Libra will take over.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  No Bitcoin.

• 35:00Nilay Patel?

  So, but then there's this one exception. So you have to prove that you're not motivated against any political parties viewpoints, including supremacy, which is a political viewpoint. An action of a provider, this is an exception, an action provider of an interactive computer service that disproportionately restricts access to or the availability of information from political parties, candidates, or a few points shall not be considered biased if the action is necessary for business. This is like the most insane carve out of all time.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  Like the commerce clause.

• 35:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's necessary business, or the information is not speech to be protected on their First Amendment of the Constitution.

• 35:35Speaker 05

  Which is definitely a thing that platforms are always equipped to handle in all of its nuance.

• 35:40Nilay Patel?

  Again, we've been trying to write speech laws under the First Amendment for like over 200 years, and I would not say we've done a good job. Like we've stumbled our way towards this point, being like, Facebook, you figure out what business necessity means under this, it just seems wholly unworkable. So that's the thing, there's a process, you gotta do it every two years, you gotta, the FTC has to like staff up to handle these applications and review cases against it. This is a lot, and it's unclear how big, what, like, does Vox Media, we don't have $500 million revenue. If you want to get, if you want to make it so that we do, by just writing us checks, we'll take it. And I'll solve this problem. Uh, we, like, it wouldn't be us, right? We'd still get to do whatever, but the Times might fall under it, other, Reddit might fall under it.

• 36:25Speaker 05

  I'm also not clear on how it works with giant conglomerates that include something that may be this service, given that now like three media companies own everything.

• 36:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  Oh, so like Warner Media might fall under this.

• 36:39Speaker 05

  If it has something that is an interactive service, like, which is literally anything that produces user-generated content in terms of Section 230, and I don't know why it would be different here.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Disney would definitely, like, if there's, if there's a comment section anywhere on a Disney site.

• 36:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you have to approve, you have to submit your. So that this is a lot.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  Okay, does this apply only to online? Or does it also apply to like Disney theme parks? And they have to, they have to make sure that they allow any political speech in a Disney theme park?

• 37:07Speaker 05

  It is interactive computer services. So maybe a Disney park is an interactive computer service, but I don't think it is.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  There are robots moving around. You interact with them. Think about it. Think about it.

• 37:19Nilay Patel?

  So Addie, you tweeted McKenna's story. This is where I was gonna start with. Addie's tweet of McKenna's story literally was just, ah! Like, that's all it was. Tell me why you had that reaction to this.

• 37:31Speaker 05

  It was not, in fact, anything that was in the bill text. It was that when he introduced it, he introduced it with a really terrible description of what Section 230 is, which was that with Section 230, tech companies get a sweetheart deal that no other industry enjoys: complete exemption from traditional publisher liability in exchange for providing a forum free of political censorship. This has nothing to do with Section 230.

• 37:56Nilay Patel?

  Can I play the song again?

• 37:57Speaker 08

  So show me platforms are not required to be neutral by law. There is no publisher platform distinction by law.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  So just listen to the song. That's what the law says. Josh Hawley has not listened to the song. We can send him the song. Well, I'll burn a CD for him. But that's really the thing here, right? Is that no one is really happy with how companies are moderating their platforms. I think that's just a truth.

• 38:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:25Nilay Patel?

  Right? They don't seem to be doing a job. I actually agree with Senator Hawley. They're not transparent at all. It's a criticism he has that I think is very, very valid. The conflict, as near as I can understand it, is that I think the platform should do a better job of moderating, by which I mean more. More moderation has like a real human cost, right? That's Casey's story. There is a massive human cost to moderating these platforms. It's destroying people. You should read that story. You should listen to that podcast. It's harmful to people to moderate these platforms. So if you want more, you gotta deal with that. On the other hand, I think Senator Hawley and a bunch of conservatives want them to moderate less, or moderate in a way that favors them. And so you get bills

• 39:10Nilay Patel?

  like this that say, "A lot of conservative speech really overlaps the stuff you're taking down. And so we're going to take away the entire, the entire foundation of your business if you don't prove to us that you're not harming us." And I think that is, that's just deeply intention.

• 39:25Speaker 05

  Yes. And it's also framed in, again, a way that does not describe how the law currently works and does not describe it in a way that suggests that there is some kind of legal precedent here that Facebook is failing at, that clearly we have to right this great wrong that we promised them in the 90s when we told Facebook that-

• 39:44Nilay Patel?

  Which didn't exist.

• 39:45Speaker 05

  Yes, that they could had to moderate neutrally. Like, it is a really terrible partisan framing of this law.

• 39:54Nilay Patel?

  So what's interesting about it, by the way, can I, there is a definition of business associated. I'm gonna read it to you, and you just, you just think about it. The term necessary for business, by the way, necessary for business, a great album name if you're starting a band. The term necessary for business refers to a lawful act that advances the growth, development, or profitability of a company, but does not include any action designed to appeal to or gain favor from persons or groups because of their political beliefs, political party membership, or support for political candidates.

• 40:20Speaker 04

  See, that's just missing the, I mean, we're in a climate where politics has become so necessary for business.

• 40:28Nilay Patel?

  Can CNN, now owned by Warner Media, now owned by AT&T, certainly over $500 million, can CNN have comments on their website? Can Fox News have comments on their website?

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Well, or-

• 40:38Nilay Patel?

  Can Reddit have "R the Donald," which is definitely designed to appeal to gain favor from persons or groups because of their political beliefs? That's like, very dangerous territory to be in.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I really think the Reddit model is very interesting because you have, in some sense, relatively loose moderation for the overall site, but then you have very tight moderation per subreddit because it's user-defined moderation, in a sense.

• 41:07Nilay Patel?

  But, under this bill, there's no carve-out for you can let your users moderate themselves.

• 41:12Speaker 05

  Or you could ban all political speech and that is not discriminatory.

• 41:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you could just ban it all, which is like, one outcome.

• 41:18Speaker 04

  But what if the personal is political?

• 41:21Nilay Patel?

  Alright, Paul. You just, you just keep mining your Bitcoin, or whatever you're doing over there. So, Addy, one thing that's interesting to me is it seems like no one likes this bill.

• 41:30Speaker 05

  Absolutely no one. So, let's cue this up. Ron Wyden, who wrote to, Section 230, does not like it. That is not a surprise. We'll just move on from that one. Justin Amash, who is a Republican, also does not like it. He says, the thing that is actually a pretty standard at this point, kind of libertarian-conservative point, which is that we're bringing back the fairness doctrine, basically, that we're now going to create a committee that tells companies, that are private companies, what they can do politically.

• 42:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  So, he calls it a sweetheart deal for big government. The FTC-

• 42:06Nilay Patel?

  The government always gives itself a sweetheart deal.

• 42:09Speaker 05

  Alright. Former Republican FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright also calls it "death by bureaucratic board or the plaintiff's bar." Says it "might feel good to some conservative politicians, but there will be a terrible hangover for everyday internet users." Confusingly, Gab, the less moderation-

• 42:32Nilay Patel?

  The right-wing Twitter clone, that's what it is.

• 42:35Speaker 05

  Guy like Twitter Reddit? Yeah, anyway, so, at first it opposed it and said it was terrible, and then, I think it didn't realize that there was actually, that this was only supposed to apply to big companies, so then someone pointed it out and took it back, and now they say they support it.

• 42:50Nilay Patel?

  Good. Well, good. Gab is like, we admit, we will never have 300 million users or 500 million dollars.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  This does line up with Gab's stated moderation policy.

• 43:00Nilay Patel?

  Which is nothing.

• 43:01Speaker 04

  It's the only, yeah, right. Nothing outside of legal free speech.

• 43:05Nilay Patel?

  Okay. And then a bunch of Democrats also think it's dumb.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 43:08Nilay Patel?

  But mostly, obviously, what's interesting is, Holly is Republican, Republicans think it's dumb. I will say this, I'm going to give him credit for this. I do not think he wrote this bill expecting it to be taken seriously. It is so over the line. Like, it is unworkable. I don't even know how the FTC, I don't even know why it's the FTC doing it.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  It's like a conversation starter?

• 43:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think, I think the people are angry that they don't know how the companies work. And this is a way to move the window of, we will just take 230 away from you. Right? Like, here's a bill that would just take it away from you unless you do what we want. And might this prompt companies to start being more transparent about their policies? Might it prompt companies to be more transparent about who's doing their work? I think Casey's story, his two stories, one in February and one this week, prove the point fairly conclusively that no one knows how these companies work, or who these people are, what their working conditions are like. And more transparency is desperately needed there because those people are horribly mistreated. So like, I'll give him the credit, right? I'm being very charitable because I think this bill is ridiculous. But the most charitable reading is he doesn't expect this to be taken seriously.

• 44:11Nilay Patel?

  He expects a lot of people to start talking about, how would you take away 230? Or how would you demand transparency? That is the most charitable reading of this. What do you think?

• 44:19Speaker 05

  The weird thing is that as far as my read of the bill is, it doesn't really talk that much about transparency. Like, it mentions the certification process, but it does not seem focused on that at all. Like, the less charitable read is that he doesn't expect it to pass, but he's trying to score points.

• 44:33Nilay Patel?

  Right. He's trying to score the conservative speeches unfairly biased against some platforms' points.

• 44:38Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 44:39Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they could just write a law making Twitter illegal, which is something I would support. But like, that's effectively where they're going, is either you do what we want, or we'll make your business illegal.

• 44:49Speaker 05

  And there has the kind of means testing that's like the punish Facebook method, which Elizabeth Warren also has in a slightly different way.

• 44:57Nilay Patel?

  Right. If you're so vague, we'll break you up.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  Trying to create ways that we can just carve out these like three companies and make them pay.

• 45:06Nilay Patel?

  I don't oppose it. So Paul, we've talked, we've talked about on this show a lot about this. How do you feel about a panel of federal trade commissioners reviewing moderation policies and deciding if they're fair to speech or not?

• 45:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, my litmus test for, one of my litmus tests for a law is, does the government do more than it's doing right now or less? And it's, this sounds like a more, so I'm

• 45:31Nilay Patel?

  I would say it's substantially more. Like, one of the clauses, like, the FTC will staff appropriately for this. And that's like, well, Facebook has 15,000 moderators.

• 45:40Speaker 04

  I do think it's interesting. Like you said, like, if it's a conversation start, like, have you guys ever heard of the McDonald's principle? Like, if you're with a group of friends and you can't decide where to go out to eat, you suggest McDonald's. And everybody's like, that's a terrible idea. But it sparks ideas. People have alternatives, because they've, of course, they could beat McDonald's. So, wow, maybe people, it's an interesting, and it's also, it's bringing up this idea of this, there being, like, that, in a sense, like, everything is speech. And that you, when you are publishing, sorry, platforming, whatever you want to call it, when you, when you

• 46:19Nilay Patel?

  You want me to play the song again?

• 46:21Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 46:22Nilay Patel?

  I'll do it.

• 46:23Speaker 04

  When you host content, whether or not you created it, right, it is, in a sense, speech. And I think that's interesting. I don't want to have some sort of bonkers, like, legal bonanza of libel. But I do think that, I do think it's an interesting way to think about it. But, and it's something that all this talk about Section 230, no matter how many times people get it wrong, Eli, I do think it has made people think more about that concept. But, obviously, the solution is decentralized, open source communication protocols.

• 46:59Nilay Patel?

  Perfect. So Addy, what happens next here?

• 47:02Speaker 05

  It seems like probably nothing.

• 47:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 05

  Alternately, it seems like, yeah, maybe someone else will introduce a bill that competes with this. Maybe it will be like net neutrality, or phone unlocking, or a few other sort of hot tech issues where everybody just cycles through trying to find their version. And then maybe eventually something passes.

• 47:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:20Speaker 05

  Although now it seems like nothing ever passes.

• 47:22Nilay Patel?

  That's the way it goes. You can see how Ron Wyden, who has said to us, like, if they don't start doing a better job, we will figure out ways to change 230. Like, he's, maybe he's gonna be like, Josh. I'm assuming senators only call themselves by their first name. They'd be like, Josh, get in my office. And Josh would be like, Ron. And they'd be like, this bill is a mess, but I like where your head's at. Like, is it that? Or is it, this is just ridiculous, go home, Josh Hawley?

• 47:46Speaker 05

  I'm not sure. Because I'm not really sure how much you can work when the goal here is clearly not to find a workable version of Section 230. It is based purely on getting the outcome that you want.

• 47:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 05

  So if we're taking it charitably, maybe. And if we are taking it really charitably, then we could have a version of this that is focused actually on the transparency aspect. That is about if you have this, if you're really big and you do a lot of moderation, we need to have some kind of system where you will tell us how all this stuff works.

• 48:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think the fundamental conflict is some people want the platforms to moderate more and the other side wants them to moderate less. And this law is the focal point. What were you going to say, Paul?

• 48:26Speaker 04

  I think one interesting, I don't know how to make this a law, and I definitely don't know how to make this a law involving less government. But I feel like a concept that sounds fair to me is that when you make your first post on a site, there are terms and conditions for that content. And I feel like those terms and conditions should apply in perpetuity for that content. Like, if they change the rules later and they've got new rule, you know, and like, I feel like that's somehow the framework of at least how, what seems intuitive, fair. Because when you, when you offer content to a platform, you, you have some sort of, and it's obviously wrong, but you have some sort of sense that this is mine and will remain the same.

• 49:11Speaker 04

  I don't know. I don't quite know how to articulate it.

• 49:14Speaker 05

  It seems like there's going to be trouble with, in that case, the fact that there are just spammers and very clear bad faith actors that are constantly trying to game the rules. And it seems like if the issue is that you can't retro, like, you can't evolve these things as tech evolves and as people, you get into this game, then you're going to kind of end up being stuck with an unworkable platform.

• 49:35Nilay Patel?

  My answer, Paul, is that the, the way that you solve it with less government is more competition and hence. You break them up. Okay.

• 49:43Speaker 04

  Nailed it.

• 49:44Nilay Patel?

  It's a fact. But it is also true to Addie's point that Elizabeth Warren's proposal to break up these companies is literally like the same kind of, if you're this big and have this many people, we're breaking you up. And like, there's only three of those companies.

• 49:58Speaker 05

  I will say that hers is a little bit clearer on there literally only being three of those companies.

• 50:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:03Speaker 05

  Because 500 million in revenue is, obviously, that is a very large number for any reasonable person, but that's not like Facebook levels of huge.

• 50:11Nilay Patel?

  That's true. And it is interesting, we should ask Holly what he thinks of the Times. Josh Hawley, get on the show. We'll see what we make that happen. Okay, we're taking a break. We'll come back. Dieter's gonna yell about RCS. It's gonna be wonderful.

• 50:25Speaker 07

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• 50:58Speaker 09

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• 51:27Nilay Patel?

  All right, Paul.

• 51:27Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 51:28Nilay Patel?

  Every week, my friend, there's a segment renowned for its consistency in naming.

• 51:33Speaker 04

  I just can't find the tab. There's a lot, I have a lot of notes.

• 51:37Nilay Patel?

  How does this happen every week?

• 51:38Speaker 03

  Is that the name of the segment? I just can't find the tab?

• 51:41Speaker 04

  I wrote down a lot of notes for Libra this week, and so now I lost my notes for the segment that I do every week, which is called, "Now That's a Smart Kid." And it's about Microsoft and Kano are teaming up for like a DIY, a build your own Windows 10 PC kit. And I just really like to imagine a child build a, the kit, it kind of looks a little bit like an OLPC, but the, the, the, the, the screen part is, is a detachable, very thick tablet with touchscreen. And, um, and in the back, you can see how it's put together. It's basically a very large Raspberry Pi like thing connected to a very large battery.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  And a speaker. I mean, the thing is, is that the assembly is you're plugging a speaker into this board, you're plugging a battery into this board, and then you're putting it into a case, and then you're booting it up and it already runs Windows 10. And I'm not saying that they are lying to these children.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  But what did you really build?

• 52:50Nilay Patel?

  What would you have them do?

• 52:51Speaker 04

  I want a manual where you can write your own Windows 10 kernel from scratch and then you boot it and see if it works. And if you got it wrong, you go back to the start.

• 53:02Nilay Patel?

  But they already made like a Linux version of this thing. I bought one for my niece and nephew.

• 53:06Speaker 04

  That's, that's why the segment, Neil, is called Now That's a Smart Kid.

• 53:09Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's why it's been consistently called Now That's a Smart Kid for so long.

• 53:12Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly.

• 53:13Nilay Patel?

  I love this thing, is what I've decided.

• 53:15Speaker 04

  It's really cute.

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  Like there, yes, you can build a PC. I doubt many children have access to the money required to like build a great PC right now. So like having a cheap version of you can build a PC, which is like how I started doing stuff is awesome.

• 53:30Speaker 04

  If you are a caring and enthusiastic parent, I say for $300, now, this is great. And if you have a ton of money, get one of these too. But if you have $300, you and your child can go on newegg.com or PC Part Picker, you can get a great PC for $300. And then plug it into one of those like 4K displays that it's like $12 at Costco that tracks everything that you do and has virus.

• 53:57Nilay Patel?

  But does it come with a Windows 10S license? You know, the popular operating system, Windows 10S?

• 54:03Speaker 04

  I hope not.

• 54:05Speaker 04

  All right, Dieter.

• 54:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:08Speaker 04

  RCS. There's a bunch of like Google Googling, I would say.

• 54:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, Google's just Googling all over the place last week. So RCS, Rich Communication Services, the GSMA-approved spec for replacing short message service, SMS, has had a bad rollout. No one is using it. All the carriers are ignoring it. The carriers that aren't ignoring it, half of them are using their own proprietary version of RCS, and that's something that's compatible with the quote-unquote "universal" profile. And it's been a mess. So Google, which spent the last year and presumably the year before that trying to get everybody on board, and managed to get everybody to promise they'd support it, but they never actually did it, is just gonna do it itself. They're just gonna offer RCS services to any Android user. They're gonna start small in the UK and France, and then they're gonna roll it out

• 54:55Speaker 03

  to other countries, and eventually, if you have an Android phone, you can install Android Messages and have Google provide your texting services instead of your carrier.

• 55:03Speaker 04

  I mean, this is a thing everybody wants.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  Except that it's not encrypted.

• 55:06Speaker 04

  Does this mean they could make a Google RCS iPhone app? And it would work because they're just running the servers anyways?

• 55:12Speaker 03

  So the answer to that question is probably not. Currently RCS is modeled on using your phone number as your identity. And that means that everything has to run through whatever your SIM card is attached to, because that is, that phone number is the key thing that identifies you. In theory, they could, in the future, do something like what Apple does and create a database online that associates your phone number with a Google ID, and then it will be able to distribute it via that Google ID. But they haven't announced that yet because they don't want to get sued into oblivion by the EU. And maybe they're not even thinking about doing it, I don't know. But right now RCS works literally app to app.

• 55:55Speaker 03

  Like, if I wanna text you, Paul, my Android Messages app sends a push notification to your phone. And if your phone gets it and you have Android Messages, Android Messages will receive that push notification, just like if you got a Netflix push notification, and it'll say, "Oh yeah, I'm awake, I'm here. Yeah, I have RCS, cool." And then we'll start talking directly to each other over RCS. If you don't have RCS, that text, that push notification will hit your phone and just like get ignored. And then Android Messages on my end will be like, "Oh, sad panda," and then send you a regular text message. All of which is to say, it's a decentralized system that depends on like actual phone numbers to work, which means that you are not going to be able to have multiple devices that you can text from unless you like do wacky QR code things.

• 56:39Nilay Patel?

  Right, and that QR code stuff like fundamentally just like mirrors your phone, right?

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 56:45Nilay Patel?

  Good, that's like how WhatsApp used to work.

• 56:47Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 56:47Nilay Patel?

  So, you said it's not encrypted.

• 56:49Speaker 03

  It is not end-to-end encrypted, it is encrypted in transit, just like, you know, going to a website, but it's not encrypted at rest on the server, so the on your, on the server where it goes through to get to the other person, like the company that owns that server can look at it. We don't know what carriers' data retention policies are. Google's data retention policies are, we delete it as soon as we know that you've received it, and we, you know, get rid of metadata in some short time period as well, but it might hang on to files for just a little bit longer because, you know, you might like close the chat and then want to go back the next day and like re-look at that GIF or re-download that file or whatever.

• 57:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, can they turn on encryption?

• 57:29Speaker 03

  There is no technical reason that you could not build an encryption system on top of RCS. Doing it would mean a couple of things. You'd have to figure out what the right system is and it would be complicated. You'd have to decide whether or not you would try and do what RCS does right now, which is get everybody on board with the GSMA to agree on a standard. And, last but not least, if you're Google and you're talking about encrypting every single message on every single Android phone, the platform that owns 85% of the world market, will you be able to stand up to the pressure from, let's say, all, all the countries not wanting you to do it?

• 58:11Nilay Patel?

  Countries wouldn't do that, Dieter, to take it back.

• 58:16Nilay Patel?

  So this is not quite the iMessaging of Android that we have been anticipating.

• 58:21Speaker 03

  It is not, although like it is a default way, it's gonna like a default way to get half decent, pretty good text messaging that has read receipts and typing indicators and better pictures that will be universal.

• 58:33Nilay Patel?

  Does it have reactions?

• 58:35Speaker 03

  I don't know. Eventually, in that respect, it may become popular enough to like pressure Apple to support RCS someday and it like will be an upgrade relative to SMS, but that is a pretty low bar. Where I'm at, like, I don't know what else Google could do. They, my conspiracy theory is that this was their plan all along, they just couldn't execute it because people would have gotten mad. And so they just, they waited until all the carriers like screwed it up and didn't implement it. And then they're like, well, I guess we gotta do this because everybody wants us to, fine. And that's the next step is they're gonna start lighting it up in different countries and see if anybody gets mad. But yeah, like three years ago, five years ago with Hangouts, if, you know, like what

• 59:16Speaker 03

  I want to do, what I want Google to do is invent a time machine, go back in time and not screw Hangouts up, right? Or go back in time and not screw Gchat up. But given where they were in 2015 is like Hangouts like lost the thread and got really weird and they didn't know what they were doing, like there's no other resets available to them. They tried to reset with like a Google service that was called ALO and all of seven people used it.

• 59:41Nilay Patel?

  ALO was not end-to-end encrypted either. I mean, I like.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  It was if you turned on an incognito chat, but it was not default encrypted.

• 59:48Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that to me is like the, I mean, you, you have switched to an iPhone because this is table stakes now, right? Like, I'm just not gonna use a messaging services and end-to-end encrypted.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  The thing that I believe is like the default should be end-to-end encrypted. And so that's why ALO wasn't like acceptable is you had to go and install an app and then you had to switch it into incognito. You know, like WhatsApp is great. It's end-to-end encrypted, you know, Signal's even better. That's my, that's my preferred messaging app if I can get anybody to use it. The only people that I've been able to get to use it are my wife because she loves me and Paul because he loves me.

• 1:00:23Nilay Patel?

  Because blockchain. It's because I love Dieter.

• 1:00:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  What happens next?

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  Uh, what happens next is it gets lit up in the UK and France in the next week or two. And then we see if anybody notices.

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  Do you think they picked the UK because they're so distracted by Brexit that like the, the government won't notice?

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably. Uh, they also like, there's a bunch of like, there's a bunch of carriers in those countries, like the big ones that have already implemented RCS. And if your carrier does runs RCS on its own, like Google will just let them continue to do that. It doesn't care. Uh, it doesn't, it's so that's like how it's proving that it's not taking business away from carriers by doing this. But there's a bunch of like smaller carriers and MVNOs and whatever that like, you know, they look at the costs it'll take to like rent a Jive server from Google. Or like build their own and whatever. And they're like, yeah, no, I don't want to spend that. That's stupid. I, I don't want to spend that money. Google, will you just handle this for us? And Google's like, sure.

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, there is an aspect where the US is largely iMessage.

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  Everywhere else is largely WhatsApp and Telegram. China is WeChat. Like where, where is RCS like sorely needed?

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  Everywhere and nowhere, I guess, is how I'd put it. Um, what's sorely needed is like replacing SMS with something that's IP based. Right. With something actually good. And that's like, that's the whole thing is like, if, if all the carriers just got together and like, we're upgrading SMS. And like, we're all going to do it in 2019. And, uh, by the way, Google also is supporting it, uh, on Android. And we hope Apple gets on board because they're going to have to. Um, everyone would have been like, cool. So see if you do it. But the thing that makes this really complicated is the carriers weren't doing that. They were content to have SMS continue to suck. And Google had tried literally everything else possible in messaging. And so they wanted to do this.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  And so it was Google that was pushing this. So everyone's thinking of this as a Google service. And they're like, no, it's not. But you know, now it is because they're going to just be offering the services to people.

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  It's such a sad story. I'm sad.

• 1:02:30Nilay Patel?

  I'm excited. I think they got to support it at the phone level, too. Right? Like, individual phones have to support it. And now that there's like, some guarantee that there's an RCS server on, you know, that every person, every carrier can address. I feel like the phones will come along, and that's like a good thing.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, so actually, the phones don't have to support it anymore. Right now, carriers are approving it phone by phone. But in this new model, all of RCS happens in the quote-unquote APK space. So it's just like, it's just an app.

• 1:03:00Nilay Patel?

  Huh.

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  And the app becomes your default SMS client. And it just like listens for the push notification from other Android messages apps. So like, before this, I think there was like some security stuff where like they didn't want other, you know, things to take over SMS. But Google's just like, well, we could just do this, so we're just gonna do it.

• 1:03:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. APK space sounds like a great coworking office for Android developers.

• 1:03:24Speaker 04

  Well, APK space-

• 1:03:25Nilay Patel?

  Just a free idea.

• 1:03:26Speaker 04

  I mean, this whole story is sort of a narrative of like, I'm really at the point, what, what, what? My phone number is basically useless. I've got a SIM card, right? But that's like, it's almost like a billing convenience, you know? Like, we know which device used like four gigabytes of YouTube, you know? Like, but like, I basically, I just want devices and I want them to have access to the internet. But this whole SIM card, phone number, tight relationship with a phone carrier, I, it seems outdated and useless. It seems counterproductive at this point.

• 1:04:00Speaker 05

  It also means that desktop, like, I use Gchat on desktop. I use chat on desktop so much, and it sounds like this is really just trying to kill that.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you can do it with the QR code thing. They're not trying to kill it, they just, they don't know how to make it work. Because they don't, they tried it and no one used it, so they're-

• 1:04:17Nilay Patel?

  Right, and they don't own all the servers like Apple does.

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Speaker 04

  I'm still hoping.

• 1:04:22Nilay Patel?

  You know, Paul, I wrote a piece predicting the death of the phone number in like 2012. It didn't, it didn't, it didn't happen. Just putting that out there. All right, Dieter, one more Google thing happened this week.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. So apparently they had two tablets that they were working on and Computer World and then Business Insider heard that those tablets were canceled, that there was like a meeting with all the Google employees working on the tablets. And they're like, you don't, those are gone. You're done. Go work on something else. Go work on the Pixel book. And then Google like confirmed it. They're just like, yeah, we're, we're going to focus on laptops. And like, like the head of hardware, Rick Osterloh, confirmed it again. And, you know, no, we promise we're going to pay attention to, you know, Chrome OS for third parties and Android for third parties. And, you know, we're going to support the ecosystem, blah, blah, blah. But like, today, Google simultaneously announced, like admitted the existence of that,

• 1:05:17Speaker 03

  to me, that counts as announcing, and then canceled two tablets.

• 1:05:20Nilay Patel?

  I like this new Rick Osterloh hardware strategy. He's like, yeah, yup. You know, I've got like 50,000 employees that are doing stuff. It's true. I like it. I will say that this also makes me happy because the Pixel book is good.

• 1:05:34Speaker 03

  The Pixel book is good, except for its Bluetooth module. It is still my favorite laptop hardware of the past few years. It needs like an update to make the bezels smaller on the screen, but otherwise, like, don't touch it. Keep everything the same, as far as I'm concerned, including leave the headphone jack in. The Pixel Slate was a mess, a huge mess. I actually started using mine again a couple of weeks ago because it's like, this is probably better now, right?

• 1:05:58Nilay Patel?

  Nope.

• 1:06:00Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:06:01Nilay Patel?

  It's never good when you're at the launch event, you pick it up, you're like, oh, this is very laggy. And they're like, huh. Like, yeah. It's like, you guys should know. I mean, Android on tablets just has never worked. It has literally never worked.

• 1:06:11Speaker 03

  That is true. It has literally never worked, except like, maybe like the very first one with Honeycomb. You're like, oh, maybe. And then like, no apps came.

• 1:06:19Nilay Patel?

  I liked the Nexus 7. I have a second gen Nexus 7. It is very slow now. I do still use it, but I only use it to run the Sonos app. And I only still have it there because I don't understand this. Android supports multi-user on tablets, but not on phones.

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  It does on phones. It's just 90% of OEMs turn it off. On a Pixel, you can still do multi-user on a phone.

• 1:06:42Nilay Patel?

  No, I have a, I have a Nexus 6P and it does not have it on there.

• 1:06:46Speaker 03

  On a Pixel, you can still do it on your phone.

• 1:06:48Nilay Patel?

  All right. Maybe I'll, I'll put, anyway, but I still use the Nexus 7 because I can have the second account that only has the Sonos app. And like sits there and it's just very slow and I feel very bad for every guest in my home. It's like, can I change the music? I'm like, some minutes from now you will. It is true. Anyhow, I just, why can't they get this right? It feels like Apple's like charging ahead and Google just like nowhere. And then, yeah, obviously there's Microsoft, there's Windows tablets, but they're very desktopy still.

• 1:07:17Speaker 03

  They're very desktopy. I think that part of it, so Business Insider was like, they, they like, it didn't meet their quality assurance standards. Like they QA'd these tablets and they're like, this isn't going to work. If we hand this out to reviewers, it'll just be the pixel slate all over again. So like two pieces of news there. One, Google started QAing its tablets, which is great.

• 1:07:37Speaker 03

  Two, I think they know that they're never going to catch up to the iPad. It's always, it's accelerating away from them. And at, at Google's most ambitious, at their like, we can, we can make the most amazing tablet possible. It's still going to be half as good as an iPad at best. And I think that they just, they don't want to be compared to that iPad anymore. And so they're like, nah.

• 1:08:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And not, and to be fair, not only the iPad, the enormous range of excellent Windows tablets that are like available, that do something very different than that. There's not like a middle ground. Right? There's like Apple's version of the future of computing and whatever's happening now that it's iPadOS. Which by the way, Apple tells us like, oh, just a name change on their website. They're like, this is the biggest name change in the world. So some confusion there, but Apple's like, they've got their vision. Microsoft has an extension of its existing vision, which is like, what if desktop and a tablet, right? There's no space in between.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, I'll give Microsoft a little bit more credit than that, but I mean, I get where you're going. With Chrome OS, they've had two years, maybe a little more, trying to like nail a tablet interface and just have it do basic things like not lag three seconds when you're trying to move a window in tablet mode. Right? Not, not like. Like three seconds, like the huge, huge lag and swaths of lag. And the first time you're like, what the heck? And like, we're working on it, but you know, it's still in laptop mode. So you know, we believe we can do it. I was like, okay, sure. But the Pixel Slate, which was released last year, and I reviewed once, something with very good hardware. You would try and drag a window down from the top and you'd move your finger to the left of the screen and then two seconds later, the window would be there.

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  It was ridiculous. They had two years to figure it out.

• 1:09:21Nilay Patel?

  I just want to clarify before the Microsoft people yell at me. What I mean is Apple's, Apple's version of this, and Deter here credit, you understood what I was saying.

• 1:09:29Speaker 03

  I see what you're saying, yeah.

• 1:09:30Nilay Patel?

  Apple's version is like, what if we start over and like, start from the beginning and like, they've like iterated. And Microsoft is, what if Windows but touch? And they've done a good job. I'm not saying they didn't do, they did a bad job. I'm just like afraid of the tweets. That's what's happening right now. My own speech is being chilled because the Windows people are going to be mad at me. Everyone's doing great, except for Google. The end. What do you want me to say?

• 1:09:56Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:09:57Nilay Patel?

  Also, Delia hates Linux. He thinks Linux is so funny doing this to me. This is the year for Linux on the desktop. It's going to be awesome. Google finally made the move. By the way, speaking of laptops, Vergecast listeners might know about my beloved 15-inch MacBook Pro GPU. You may have heard its fan several times throughout this episode. Apple recalled mid 2015 MacBook Pros for battery issues. There's a battery replacement program now, but the issues are apparently so severe that the instruction is, stop using your laptop until the battery is replaced. Which seems very significant to know about a laptop four years after you released it, that there's a battery issue of this significance. But to Apple's credit, they said it.

• 1:10:42Nilay Patel?

  They're replacing the batteries. You don't have to like buy a new laptop. It's not some like conspiracy theory to get you to buy a touchbar laptop. You can do it. This is important, however, because the 2015 MacBook Pros, it's like the one people were still buying. Yeah, right. It's like, there's like a, a black market for these. Uh, because people don't want touch bar ones. So it's, it's good, but I, I, I think, I think I'm done.

• 1:11:04Speaker 03

  Are you gonna go get your battery replaced? Or are you gonna go get a, another computer?

• 1:11:08Nilay Patel?

  It's like, what if I get the battery replaced, but then I have this laptop, like, I'm still doomed with this fan noise and extremely slow, discreet GPU that does nothing.

• 1:11:17Speaker 03

  I, I, I think that, uh, if you want a big screen, I think you should look at a Surface Book.

• 1:11:22Nilay Patel?

  Alright, I'll think about it.

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  Think about it.

• 1:11:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, now that I love Windows so much.

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:27Nilay Patel?

  Remember? You heard me say that.

• 1:11:30Nilay Patel?

  Alright, Dieter, you on, you put the video game in here, Addie's here, I trust you to have a video game conversation. This is your moment.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  I was so excited for Cyberpunk 2077. Um, I played a little bit of the RPG when it came out, but I mostly played Shadowrun. Uh, and then everyone got, lost their mind because, uh, some PR genius has manufactured that, this moment that we're having in our culture right now, that Keanu is an angel and perfect. Um, and I'm sure he is a very nice guy. Uh, but because he was in the video game, everybody lost their minds. Uh, and that's fine. Um, but then I watched the preview and it was, um, like, the, the main character was like, I guess just like a dude bro? And, um, I felt a little disappointed. And then, um, Addie, you actually played it.

• 1:12:13Speaker 05

  No, I saw there was a, a hands-off demo. They have the thingy three where they show you someone else playing the game and are like, this is only for you. Don't tell anyone.

• 1:12:24Speaker 05

  So, yeah. I saw a mission.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  It's, it looks like, pretty like, you know, here's a crazy world and at the end of the day, like, you shoot guns and upgrade your character.

• 1:12:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I also, I, I, I know in the name of a video game. I'm so proud of myself. I watched the Death Stranding trailer and it's terrifying.

• 1:12:43Speaker 05

  It's super weird.

• 1:12:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:44Nilay Patel?

  Like, if you're... I will say we're at the point in our culture where like a giant companies are like, "You've been waiting for this game. Now this trailer play." And it's like, "Oh shit, I'm a baby and I'm coming out of a birth canal." Like, that is a, that is a place that we are.

• 1:12:57Speaker 05

  The thing that worries me about E- about the cyberpunk thing is that obviously a game cannot, can be not representative of, like, E3 missions are very different from games that actually come out, but usually you try to show off your weirdest thing. Like, I was going back and looking at Dishonored 2's gameplay at E3 a few years ago, and it was this crazy clockwork mansion where you can, or like this thing where you can manipulate time. Like, everybody tries to show off their weirdest stuff, and here it is like, "Well, you can open a door with your robot arms, or you can shoot somebody."

• 1:13:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, which, I mean, if you're gonna make a video game about like a realistic future of what's actually gonna happen, I guess, yeah, that's, that's right. That's what the robot arms are gonna do when we get them.

• 1:13:37Nilay Patel?

  All right. Zelda. I said it. That's the other game I know.

• 1:13:40Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:13:41Nilay Patel?

  Dieter has a huge note in the rundown that says we're gonna talk about video games without talking about Madden or Zelda, but I defeated it.

• 1:13:46Speaker 04

  Since Neely has broached the subject, on a scale of like, most open world being Breath of the Wild, and then the least open world being like, one of those like, I don't know, like Final Fantasy VIII or something, you know, like a completely on-rails RPG, like, where would you, is, is cyberpunk like, more open than Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead, or like, less open?

• 1:14:09Speaker 05

  So that's the weird thing, is that the thing that CD Projekt Red does is like, these giant open worlds with relationships and all that, and the thing they showed off seemed much more like an immersive sim. It was like they were trying to make Deus Ex or Dishonored, but didn't really care about any of that gameplay. I would have been much more interested if they had shown what happens if you go and like hijack a hovercar, or what happens, what are your romance options? Just anything except what they showed.

• 1:14:34Nilay Patel?

  All right. When's it come out?

• 1:14:35Speaker 05

  April 16th, 2020, the same year as the original tabletop RPG was set.

• 1:14:41Speaker 03

  Okay, that's great.

• 1:14:42Nilay Patel?

  All right. That's enough video game talk, nerds.

• 1:14:46Nilay Patel?

  It's like the nerdiest show in the world. All right, that's it. We're way over. We gotta, we gotta wrap it up. Thank you, Addie, for being here. I always love it when you're on. Thank you. Forget Josh Hawley on the show. We're gonna, we're gonna really, we're gonna team up on that one. It's gonna be fun. Paul? Uh huh. Thank you for your Bitcoin. I'm gonna thank everyone individually tonight. I'd like to thank Paul for, for Bitcoin emotions. You're welcome. Dieter, you're just ambiently thanked. Okay. No, I just, thank you. Thank him on Signal. And I wanna thank Jackson Hayes for writing me a song about Section 230. Play the song!

• 1:15:15Speaker 08

  Show me platforms are not required to be neutral by law. There is no publisher platform distinction by law.

• 1:15:25Nilay Patel?

  All right, that was the Vergecast. Please rate and review us. Just give us the five stars. I know we didn't earn it this week, but give us the five stars. We really appreciate it. You can listen to Why'd You Push That Button, which is a tremendous show. Ashley did a whole piece about Jibo, the robot that people loved, and that I was dying. You should just listen to that episode of Why'd You Push That Button. You should read the story on the website. There's some tremendous photos of people in their Jibos in that story. Check that out. Obviously, please listen to the episode with Casey about Facebook moderators. It is very important. You can listen to Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. You can listen to Pivot with Kara and Scott Galloway. Scott Galloway, we saw on Code, is very, very funny. And you can listen to Recode Media with Peter Kafka. All great, all available to you wherever podcasts are. That's it. We'll see you next week. Rock and roll.

• 1:16:09Nilay Patel?

  Paul? That's not 230.com.

• 1:16:31Speaker 10

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• 1:17:01Speaker 11

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