Zuck's AI manifesto is a data center PR masterclass | E2323

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Every.io https://every.io NetSuite https://NetSuite.ai/TWIST YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST Today's show: *Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word essay about the future of AI, and Jason thinks it's his smartest PR move in years. The thinkpiece, "The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future," arrives alongside a new open-weight Meta model — Muse Glimmer — and the promise of an open-weight version of Muse Spark 1.2 to come. Zuckerberg's clearly pitching an "abundance" narrative, promising the American public untold benefits from AI technology — everything from a PhD-level tutor for every student to scientific breakthroughs, personal assistants, and beyond — all for the low low cost of not banning new data centers. Do our hosts think everyday voters will take this deal? PLUS X retires its revenue sharing program, the CLARITY Act misses a key pre-recess vote, what can we do to stop widespread AI-powered community college cheating, and some of the podcasting positions for which LAUNCH is hiring. Relevant Links Meta: "The Future is for Everyone": https://about.fb.com/news/2026/08/the-future-is-for-everyone/ Meta: "Introducing Muse Glimmer": https://research.meta.ai/blog/introducing-muse-glimmer-open-agentic-model MS Now: "Kevin O'Leary wants to atone for his data center sins": https://www.ms.now/news/kevin-oleary-wants-to-atone-for-his-data-center-sins "The Social Reckoning" teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM4LkaXwGuY X: Original Content Rewards Program: https://help.x.com/en/using-x/original-content-rewards TechCrunch: Nikita Bier steps down as X's head of product: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/05/nikita-bier-steps-down-as-xs-head-of-product/ Congress.gov: H. R. 3633 - Digital Asset Market Clarity Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3633/text Politico: "Crypto faces a setback in the Senate": https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/07/delays-imperil-senate-crypto-bill-01029817 NYT: "AI Agents are Taking Entire Online Courses for Cheating Students": https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/us/ai-cheating-online-degrees.html Inside Higher Ed: "Brown Professor Suspects Majority of His Class Used AI to Cheat": https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessment/2026/07/08/brown-professor-suspects-most-his-class-used-ai-cheat Podnews: Spotify's Skip Ahead ad skip test: https://podnews.net/article/spotify-threat-ad-skipping Tommy Vietor X post on Spotify: https://x.com/TVietor08/status/2085073214968037428?s=20 JJ Smith SF "open drug market" video: https://x.com/war24182236/status/2086839186137710724 Timestamps: 0:00 Why Zuck thinks the future is open source 2:26 Meta's roadmap: personal assistants and beyond 9:21 Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io 20:22 Netsuite - For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to https://NetSuite.ai/TWIST 27:43 How to win the data center argument 29:32 YSecurity - The on-demand security team for startups. Need enterprise-grade security without hiring a $400k CISO? YSecurity gives you 40+ expert engineers, matched to exactly what you need, by the hour, with your first six hours completely free. Go to https://YSecurity.io/TWIST 39:24 X intros Original Content Rewards 51:58 The CLARITY Act faces new setbacks 1:00:46 AI agents are taking students' tests for them 1:09:37 LAUNCH is hiring! Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

• 0:00Speaker 00

  There is a PR group for Meta that says, how can we turn the narrative on data centers around? Because we need to build more data centers. We need to catch up here. When you're behind, you go open. When you're ahead, you go closed. I'm in your corner, and we're going to be the company that gives you an agent, a tutor, free design tools, and makes your life better. The only thing we ask is that you let us build some data centers. This is the best version of Zuckerberg I've seen in his career, and he is thinking about the ramifications of what he builds for the first time in the history of the company.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  This Week in Startups is brought to you by Y Security, the on-demand security team for startups. Need enterprise-grade security without hiring a 400K CISO? Y Security gives you 40-plus expert engineers matched to exactly what you need by the hour with your first six hours completely free. Go to ysecurity.io/twist. NetSuite. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.ai/twist. Built for every industry, ready for every boardroom, netsuite.ai/twist. And every. For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes, or other back-office administration needs, visit every.io.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  All right, everybody. Welcome back to This Week in Startups. It's our news program today. We've got a lot of news, Lon.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  We do.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  Including Mark Zuckerberg's essay. This thing is long. I went on a ruck this morning, and I listened to it.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  6,500 words. 6,500 words in Zuck's manifesto.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  He writes nine more. He's got a book. So a book is typically 60,000 words. So if he does nine more essays, you could have Zuckerberg's essays. And he's getting pretty active on X, which he never did. His handle is FinkD, if you don't know that, at F-I-N-K-D, which was his online handle when he was in college.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Yes, he has not ever changed his handle online. So yeah, the essay is titled, "The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future." Here is arguments in a nutshell. Basically, superintelligence's biggest risk is centralization, not the tech itself. He expresses three core principles: individual empowerment, AI's main purpose is invention, not automation, and there should be a balance of power in governing access to information and what we're doing with all of this intelligence. He also says, here's what Meta is building to sort of be part of this AI future. That includes a personal AI agent for everyone,

• 2:35Speaker 02

  powerful coding, video design, and more tools for everyone, ways to launch businesses without teams or funding, a PH-level tutor or coach for any subject, contributions to science, and so forth. He also discusses some of the risks: job loss, data center pushback, cybersecurity and bioweapons, the US not keeping pace with China. And he makes a few policy commitments, Jason. Meta will continue releasing open-source models. They today dropped the open-weight model Mew's Glimmer, and they're making plans for an open-weight version of Mew Spark 1.2. He also proposes independent boards to review model safety criteria, and he calls for closer cooperation between labs and the government that doesn't

• 3:16Speaker 02

  slow down the release of new models. So that's kind of a quick overview. So what do you think? I mean, I think most people, is this PR? Is this advertising for the next wave of Meta AI? Or do you take this as a sincere thing that Zuck is worried about the future and wanted to be part of the conversation?

• 3:34Speaker 00

  There's a lot going on here. I think he's learned a lot, being a technologist who moved fast and broke things and got himself into hot water. And one of the things he learned is, he's historically a terrible communicator. He's unlikable because he's rich. He maybe, you know, I don't want to diagnose anybody, but maybe doesn't make eye contact or doesn't speak in a way that is engaging to people. And so I think he understands those faults. And then also, I think, because he was such a young founder, he was getting spun by different people telling him how to run his business and how to communicate.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  So you take those two combinations together, not being a great natural communicator, but great at building a business, obviously, and then people spinning you around. But I think he's finally saying, I'm going to control the message here. I'm going to state my actual beliefs in a way like Elon does, and let the chips fall where they may. I'm going to go direct, right? And so now we're seeing him get vocal and go direct because he just paid this huge fine, right? And the entirety of the second movie that's coming out about him.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  You put all that together as just a little prologue to this, I think he now wants to communicate directly as a man, as a founder, you know, founder authority. I'm going to control the message. I'm going to actually think from first principles what I believe, and I'm going to state it. And I'm going to be more thoughtful and preempt things that typically I would just build products, not explain myself. And then when they break things, I'll just pretend that didn't happen and not say anything, and then get pulled in front of Congress, right? In corporate communications, I think he's made a lot of mistakes over the years. I think he would agree with that, too. So here we have a manifesto

• 5:35Speaker 00

  of AI, and he touches everything. And I thought it was actually very well-written and very thoughtful. But he covers everything. This is not one position. This is literally like a dozen. So you have to break down each one. So I think one place to start here is, he's for open models, and he's not for regulating open models. He believes that the best way to deal with these frontier models, with dangerous things, is not to lock them up or regulate them. It's to give everybody access to them. Sounds familiar? It's literally the manifesto of OpenAI. OpenAI's manifesto was, this technology is too powerful for

• 6:17Speaker 00

  one person to control it. So he's taking that position. That's also extremely convenient, isn't it, since he's behind? When you're behind, you go open. When you're ahead, you go closed.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:29Speaker 00

  The Facebook network, Instagram, those are black boxes. You can't index them. There's no API for them. There's no grabbing the social graph and doing interesting things with it as the developer. They dabbled in that for a couple of years and shut it all down. So when you're ahead, and you've got the franchise, you lock it down. iPhone as an example. When you're behind, Android as an example, you open up. Okay, so he's for opening, and that's a really good strategic move for him. So then he talks about the dangers. And there's a part where he talks about chemicals and that kind of stuff. And I think I screenshotted it, or you can just do a quick control find when he talks about materials. And there's a section where he talks about materials and the dangers of them.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  So essentially, he says, listen, trying to regulate the models is not going to be as effective as trying to limit access to chemicals and precursors. So we should do that. In other words, how you make a fertilizer bomb, God forbid, like Oklahoma City, we are going to have a hard time making an open-source model not be able to do that. We'll have an easier time going after the actual sale of fertilizer. He doesn't, I think, say it that crisply, but let's hear it.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, he says, labs should continue working to reduce biological and chemical risks in our models. First, we should focus on limiting the physical production and distribution of harmful materials. I expect it will be easier to regulate and control physical components than the spread of knowledge. So this is an important area of policy focus.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  So this is really important. This is the first time I've heard this idea. I think it'll be the first time you've heard it. We are bringing up the dangers of AI.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  What does Dario say when he talks about the dangers of AI? Oh, my God, this stuff is really dangerous. We had to stop it. We can't release it. He's getting involved in drama with the administration. What does Zuck say? He actually thought this through. You're not going to stop information. Information wants to be free, and AI makes it impossible to hold back this information. You're not going to stop access to open-source models coming out of China, or other countries, or America, or people making their own now. Cat's out of the bag. You could make your own model. So if we are concerned about biological weapons, the materials and the tools to make those, he didn't mention tools, but I'll add that, are where we should try to limit things. If we are actually concerned about that,

• 8:53Speaker 00

  that's actually a really good policy statement that I haven't heard from another person.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  I feel like, I feel like we already do. I mean, unless people are building bombs or whatever out of everyday, common household items, we do try to already make, like, I couldn't go buy like a bunch of different hazardous chemicals today, at least not without some sort of a license or a permit.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  You would be surprised. You can buy a lot of the precursors. No founder I've ever met started a company because they love doing paperwork. No. You don't want to spend hours filling out payroll and setting up an HR department. And I know you don't have a passion for making your taxes more complicated, do you? You want to fix problems. You want to create products in the world. All this paperwork, it is a huge distraction. You can move all that off your plate with a trusted partner, Evry. Evry is the all-in-one platform for incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, and taxes. Basically, your entire back office. They're going to keep up with all the bookkeeping and paperwork so you can stay laser focused on product market fit, scaling your company,

• 9:59Speaker 00

  hiring great team members, all that stuff you love doing. And if you're just getting started, they'll handle your Delaware C corp and getting yourself a registered agent, all with no legal fees and no delays. And Evry's worked with over a thousand startups already. That's the kind of know-how and experience you can rely on. So head over to every.io and stop wasting time on the stuff that isn't growing your company. That's E-V-E-R-Y.io. Just like the precursors to making methamphetamine made famous on Breaking Bad.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Right, well, that's, but that's my point. Like, that's Sudafed. Like, you can distill, like, that's what they're doing on Breaking Bad. Like, you could go buy a bunch of Sudafed. That's what we can't seem to sort of limit. So I'm wondering like-

• 10:43Speaker 00

  We can actually. We can do a much better job limiting the precursors.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  That's absolutely the case. And so if we do think that this is going to get out of hand, it's an inconvenience. It's bad for those businesses. If you put up friction and you require people to show their driver's license and you limit the number they can order, or they got to fill out a form and coming back 48 hours later, that'll decrease the sales of precursors, whether it's for drugs, bombs, weapons, et cetera. But it is a much better solution. And by the way, fertilizer went through the same exact hand wringing. Before Oklahoma City, the bombing that occurred there, which was a giant fertilizer bomb, like a UPS kind of style truck, you could just buy fertilizer. And then after that, they started tagging fertilizer. They started monitoring the people purchasing. They put

• 11:30Speaker 00

  all these things in. So this is something I'll give him credit for. He's not just saying this stuff is terrible. He's saying there's easy solutions to this. Then he makes another point about cyber. And if you look at his cyber section and hacking, he's basically like, you know what? AI applied to hacking, and you can pull up the quote there from it, is we're going to be living very quickly in a world where the code is made rock solid by AI. So this is a transient issue. In other words, he believes the ability to hack systems is going to go down greatly because of these tools. Therefore, the two things

• 12:12Speaker 00

  that people are very concerned about, hacking and cyber hacking, combined with biological weapons, he's just saying, he's taking them head on. Whether you agree with his position or not, you might disagree with it. My point is, he's giving thoughtful feedback on very granular issues and saying, I don't think you need to worry about it. And this is what I think the right approach should be. This is a very different approach than he's taken. And he's doing this ahead of time. So I don't know if you have that quote?

• 12:42Speaker 02

  I do. "Over time, I expect that widely deployed AI models with strong cybersecurity capabilities will lead to systems that are more secure, not less. This will be definitively true once superintelligence enables most of the world's code to be verifiably secure. The long-term answer isn't to withhold capabilities, but to establish a balance of power where superintelligence is broadly distributed."

• 13:05Speaker 00

  My point here is, now Zuckerberg is anticipating problems, taking those problems, thinking from first principles about possible solutions. This would have been amazing before he launched Instagram, made it super addicting, and caused young girls on the platform to experience body dysphoria and self-harm and anorexia and any number of diseases. And if he had a thoughtful approach to, hey, age gating and what age people should have. This is the big paradigm shift I see in Zuckerberg. Just by one example, he's now anticipating problems and taking a leadership position. I'm saying, here's how the world should work. Does that make sense, Lon?

• 13:49Speaker 02

  It does, yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  Probably the best insight he had in this whole thing was about AI and jobs. He admits, hey, there could be job loss. This is something to worry about. But if we withhold the technology and we don't make it available to everybody, that's worse than giving it to everybody for free, for eternity, unlimited, et cetera, giving access to it because he believes the job displacement will occur. But if people are learning these tools and sharpening their blade and learning how to apply them, they'll stay ahead of the job loss.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Which is exactly what Jensen said in a quip that became very famous. You're not going to be replaced by AI. You're going to be replaced by somebody using AI. Let's read how he phrases it. I think it was very well written.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Here's the Zuck quote. "Recent statistics suggest it may be more likely that individuals' capability growth could match or outpace automation, in which case people will gain the ability to do many new things before their current jobs change."

• 14:56Speaker 00

  Right. So if you think about that, just in our firm, we've been deploying AI. I've been talking about, hey, who are the AI natives inside of our venture firm? Some people are taking to it like fish to water. Other people are like, you know, not, don't want to dip their toe. Some people are up to their ankles. Some people are waiting in, right? And the quicker you adopt it, the more valuable you become, which then the organization finds more opportunities and it grows. So that rang true to me. And I thought it was a really good framing for the job loss argument and job displacement. Yes, jobs will go away, but can you stay ahead of that? He also telegraphed new products coming, which I thought was really interesting. Now,

• 15:38Speaker 00

  he doesn't have a problem launching a lot of products. And he's had a ton of failed products. People forget, Poke, that was his Snapchat clone, 202012. Slingshot was another disappearing message, 2014. Live Stage, this is a video app aimed at teens to, you know, go after Snapchat. And Bolt, that was a Snapchat-style messaging app that they tested in some, like, foreign markets. Those were four different ways he tried to attack Snapchat. Then he just put all Snapchat's features into Instagram. He also did Facebook Home, if you remember that.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  You remember, he had also the-

• 16:18Speaker 02

  The Metaverse.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Frame for photos.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  There's that whole Metaverse.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  Metaverse. Then there was Facebook gifting. There was Facebook credits for virtual games. It was a long line of things, but he mentions here what they're building.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  And we should go through each one of those.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  The first one, a personal AI agent for everyone. I have a little quote here. "Everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about. Your agent will work 24/7 on your behalf to improve your relationships, health, career, finances, home management, hobbies, and more. It's going to free up the time," is what he's saying.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  I predict Facebook is going to launch an OpenClaw Hermes agent, Claude coworker competitor. It's going to be, you know, Facebook, you know, assistant or Instagram assistant, whatever he brands it as. One of those brands would probably be smarter. And what it's going to do is study your social media activity. If it sees that you are booking tickets or you're liking content about a certain movie in IMAX that everybody's going to see right now, The Odyssey, it's going to say, would you like me to find you tickets to The Odyssey in IMAX? And I can go do that for you. And then it's going to go do it

• 17:35Speaker 00

  for you. It's going to say, hey, your birthday's coming up. Last year, you did a birthday party. Do you want me to book a reservation for you? So it has all of that context on your life. They are in a really, really great position to take the skunkworks, patchwork of personal agents that we're all building in the technology community and give those to your auntie. You know your aunt who was never on MySpace or Friendster or, you know, other wonky social networks? But they were on Facebook and they got addicted to it because it was so simple. They could do that for your auntie, for your cousin who's addicted to Instagram, whatever it is. So that's one product that I think could be very successful then for them.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I'm sort of very divided here because on one hand, it does sound very useful, like an agent that's built into so many of the apps you've already got running on your phone, that's intelligent about all that, that you don't need to connect any of them. I think people could get a lot of use of that. But there's so much resistance among the consumer app audience for AI. I feel like you've got, that's a big thing to overcome. He's going to have to really sell people on the utility here so that they're not like, oh, more slop, get it off of my phone.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  So he doesn't have to introduce it as AI at all. It can just organically exist in your feed. And I think that's what will make this so compelling.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  You won't have to say, I want to install AI. It will just very subtly start prompting you. Hey, I see you have 17 restaurants that you've bookmarked here. Would you like me to, I put them into a list for you of-

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Restaurants in Japan.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  As an example, I do use a lot of bookmarks in Instagram. So when I go to Japan or I go to Paris, I have already bookmarked a bunch of restaurants, a bunch of shopping, a bunch of hotels, whatever it is. It could very easily close that gap for me and do intelligent agent-like things without me asking. In fact, travel and food and fashion are things that it already knows a lot about you. So it could just start saying, hey, I'm your Instagram agent. Wanted to let you know that I've kept a catalog of all of the-

• 19:53Speaker 00

  Men's clothing that you've liked, Lon, here they are. And I've monitored the prices on them and where you can get them. And here are places that make a similar item.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think that's a good.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  Those would be very subtle.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  That's very astute. I think that if you, and I think that's actually what a lot of these companies should have been doing all along with these AI. You don't need to brand everything AI. You just make it really useful and then people will start using it regardless of how they feel about the technology. I think that makes a lot of sense.

• 20:22Speaker 00

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• 21:06Speaker 00

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• 21:30Speaker 02

  He's also building what he calls powerful coding, video, and design tools for everyone. So not, not keeping these gated, you know, like these cursors just for coders or Higgs fields just for the industry. He wants to open that kind of stuff up so everybody can have access. That's the next one. Ways.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  Okay, so my next prediction is Instagram will launch a video editor, similar, an AI-based video editor, similar to the way they added filters and, you know, swiping through filters.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  That was something you did in Photoshop before it's subtracted here. That's going to be a really interesting design feature that we can use. And there's no reason that can't be like CapCut.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, CapCut's the model.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, so CapCut's the model.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  We're already three quarters of the way there with CapCut, I think.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  Based on what you've queued up there, I'm convinced they will just have their own CapCut competitor. They can build software really quick. AI-based software that can make images and video, sounds exactly like CapCut. I think they do have some tools built into these things, but I would look for another standalone item like that. Coding, I don't think they, the world needs them to do coding. I don't understand the opportunity there. So I'll say coding, I don't think he's going to do anything.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  I mean, we already have Codex, Claude Co., or, excuse me, ChatGPT Work and Claude Co. And to me, those are already the like, hey, you're not really a coder, but here's like a coding style or lovable. I mean, I feel like that already exists in the, in the world.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  Exists, yeah. I don't think they're going to compete there.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, all right.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  What's the third?

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Ways to launch businesses without teams or funding.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Okay, this is very interesting. Zuckerberg is kind of teeing off of WhatsApp. So this is, WhatsApp has business accounts. Those business accounts allow you to communicate with customers and then to use the ad networks to find customers. If you go overseas, WhatsApp is how all transactions occur. When I go to Europe, when I go to Asia, if you're talking to your driver or you're talking to your cab company, if you're talking to your hotel, if you're talking to a tourist guide, you're taking a guided tour somewhere or you're talking to a restaurant, it all winds up on WhatsApp. And you build a relationship there.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  I never had to have WhatsApp. All my time in the US, I never signed up. The moment, the day I got to Japan, I had to join because everybody, everything in Japan is happening on WhatsApp. I was amazed.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Same in Europe. So if you go to Europe, it's the same exact thing. Every single person is using that. So if you were starting a tour guide business, if you had a tour guide business as an example, or you're a driver and you provide livery services, either of those, you build a landing page, you have a Google local, and then you use WhatsApp for your operating system. Why not make it so WhatsApp has, in their WhatsApp business, the ability to make a small business page to handle customer support and do all that with AI? In other words, just take WhatsApp and build adjacencies to it.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  And what you're seeing here from when I explain all of the interesting things that he telegraphs in this manifesto, each of their key properties, he's building something aligned right next to it that builds an adjacency. One of the things we've learned about AI tools and software is the pace of software is so fast now that building an adjacent feature is faster than ever. Instead of it being a three to six month sprint to build, let's say, a homepage builder, right? Like a, you know, Wix Business Homepage Builder or HubSpot to manage your CRM. There's no reason that Zuck can't build, you know, an 80% version of that into WhatsApp in three to six months. So that's what he's doing.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  It's always the adjacencies, adjacencies, adjacencies. And I think it's pretty clear that WhatsApp is the home for the one he just mentioned there.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. So other, other things he says he's building, a PhD-level tutor or coach that will help you out in any subject. He wants to make some contributions to science, sort of like DeepMind, like he wants to, and then free or low-cost access for everyone is, is the big.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, now this is the big win.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  The big one is at the end there. If your margin's my opportunity, he's already got the second-largest ad network in the world behind Google. It already prints money for him. Every time you use Facebook to do a search, it's learning about you, just like Google. So every time you engage with Google, it knows more about you. It can target an ad better. Because they're using this AI to target ads to you, if they just get you to use their service, they will learn 10 times more about you. And if they learn even 50% more about you,

• 26:36Speaker 00

  their ad network's going to get dramatically more valuable in the world to marketers. So an ad version of Facebook GPT, Instagram GPT, and WhatsApp GPT, they should literally just put GPT at the end if they wouldn't get, if it wouldn't get sued, if it wouldn't get a letter.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Trademark, yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  But they could just put Facebook AI, Instagram AI, WhatsApp AI, and allow you to do searches there. And when you do Instagram now, it does default, when you do a search there, to a little AI clip at the top, just like the shortcuts there. So they're already doing this, and they don't even have to present an ad in that answer. And Meta's always wanted to build a search engine. I think a Facebook search engine would be a killer idea. They should buy Proplexity or they should just build their own search engine. And when you do a search, it could just be like a Google search. You just have to come up with a good name for it. Or just buy DuckDuckGo and make it part of the brand family. This would be a huge innovation for them.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  All of this backs into the final argument and what this really is about and the timing of this. And that's what one has to wonder. Why now? Why did Zuckerberg write this now? If you're a cynic or you're just speculating, you'd say, well, more CEOs are getting active, communicating directly.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  But Jensen just joined Twitter.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  We just had that big open letter that Jensen did about the power of open source. Exactly, yeah.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  So if you believe in the go-direct moment, you had Palo Alto Networks CEO and the CEO of Nvidia just joined Twitter and start writing manifestos and, you know, daily, weekly updates, and it's gone over really well. So Zuckerberg could just be following them. That would be a very basic interpretation of what's happening here.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Well, there's just, there's this big conversation going on with tech leadership and government, and maybe he just feels like he wants to be part of it, would be the theory.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  I don't believe that that's actually what's going on here.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  I think there's something very pragmatic going on here, which is data centers.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Correct, yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 00

  And data centers are really unpopular. And so if you look at this manifesto, everything about it is abundance. This is Zuckerberg's abundance.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  I am on your side. I'm going to empower you. I'm going to make it free manifesto. If you were to sum up all of the points in this memo, it's that your life is going to be better from AI. I'm in your corner, and we're going to be the company that gives you an agent, a tutor, free design tools, and makes your life better. And we're going to even teach you how to make a small business. The only thing we ask in return is that you let us build some data centers.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  The team is pumped because you're about to close a massive deal. But then the client's lawyers get involved. What happens if you get hacked? How are we going to protect your data? There's no need to panic. This is why you brought in Y Security. Y Security is staffed with over 40 experienced engineers who have actually worked security for world-class companies like Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Robinhood, Brex, and so many others. But the best part is you don't even need to hire Y Security. Your company can rent Y Security's elite team by the hour. That means no massive salaries to pay, no costly consultants, just real experts embedded in your company, helping you out with your SOC 2, ISO 4200, or any security or compliance challenge you're facing.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  You can even set a monthly cap so you know exactly how much you're spending. And your first six hours are completely free. Head to ysecurity.io/twist and book your free six-hour strategy call. That's ysecurity.io/twist.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  At the same time this was happening, this morning, I was listening to Morning Joe. In the morning, I will switch back and forth while I'm having my coffee, CNBC, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, MSNBC Now, whatever it's called. And I'll just zip through a couple of these things just to see what they're talking about. Because there's a really cool feature on YouTube, the quad, where it gives you all four. And you just, so I see this piece on Morning Joe about how great.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  Zuckerberg's data center in Utah has been, play this clip.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  Kind of engagement where different data center proposals sailed through with hardly any controversy at all.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  No controversy, Lon. There's no controversy here. What's inside here, Lon?

• 31:19Speaker 03

  Inside this shipping container is an educator's dream, a hydroponic farm tended by high school students who sell their products at a farmer's market.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  Oh, it's for the children. It's salad for children and they're learning entrepreneurship. How did that happen in Utah?

• 31:34Speaker 04

  It's good lettuce. It's not bitter? No.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  The lettuce is not bitter?

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Courtney Johnson is the former principal of Cedar Valley High School in the city of Uvalde Mountain, about 50 miles south of Salt Lake City.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Calling that a city is a little bit of a stretch.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  A hydroponic farm funded by Meta, a company of Facebook and Instagram and one of the country's biggest AI hyperscalers. Back in 2018, when the company announced plans to build this $2 billion data center on the edge of town, Johnson says she went to work.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  I started messaging Mark Zuckerberg right then. I'm like, we're a new high school. We're not opened yet, but I want to work with you because I'm all about community partnerships, right?

• 32:12Speaker 00

  Interesting, yeah.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  So yeah, they gave me the money and here we have it and it's awesome.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  This is exactly what Cuban was saying.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  They gave you a quarter million dollars.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Remember that Mark Cuban quote where he was like, just buy the communities off? Just...

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Corporate largesse that didn't end there in this old rodeo.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  Here we go. So they got a quarter million dollars for the farm. Fastest growing city in the nation. Ninth fastest growing city.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  Jared Gray is a literal cowboy and also the mayor.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  So anyway, I think you get the idea. The mayor's stumping for it. And this was a data center built in 2018 in Utah, the same place where Kevin O'Leary is doing his data center. So MS Now, which, this felt like a commercial for Meta for me, like with the background music and everything, like...

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, you know, they're like, these are, these are big corporations behind MS Now. They're not against data centers. So it probably is kind of...

• 33:02Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't know who owns MS Now now, but I'm not sure who the corporate interest here is, but it did seem to me like they were writing...

• 33:10Speaker 02

  They split off, right? It's Versant Media Group. That's the company that split off from NBC last year to run all of their cable networks.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  So it's not part of NBC anymore?

• 33:18Speaker 02

  It's no longer part of Comcast. It was Comcast. Now they're their own company called Versant Media.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  And they own CNBC. So not to be like crazy conspiracy theorist here, but now you've got mainstream media saying, hey, you got it all wrong on data centers. The same day his manifesto drops. This is a full-on, full-court press, let us build data centers. We need to build data centers. It's going to be great for your community. You're going to get hydroponic farms. You're going to put in a new stadium. They even have in this little love letter to Meta that they started a soda pop store at the high school where you have these like Italian delicious sodas from the pumps. And I was like, okay, we know

• 34:04Speaker 00

  what's going on here. There's so, this is a absolutely constructed, and I hate to do the media deconstruction here. There is a PR group for Meta that says, how do we, how can we turn the narrative on data centers around? Because we need to build more data centers. We need to catch up here. How can we do that? Let's talk about, hey, you're not going to lose your job. Check. We're going to give you a bunch of free software. Check. The world's going to be safer. You're not going to have terrorist attacks. You're going to have your own tutor for your child, your small business. We're going to give you software for that. And if you just learn how to use these tools, we're going to make them free for you for life. We're the group that's going to make super intelligence available

• 34:46Speaker 00

  for all people for free. All we ask is that you let us just build some data center.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a direct response to the big criticism, which is always like, whoa, these data centers are coming in, they're sucking up all the water, they're using up all the power and then what do we get out of it? They don't, they don't create that many jobs. It's funneling all this money to, you know, the billionaire class, the Epstein class. Like, I feel like that's the narrative. So this is trying to cut directly at the heart of that. Like, no, actually, here are all the things that you're going to get out of this data center being in your neighborhood. You're going to get a free tutor now.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  I gotta say it. Whatever PR firm, marketing comms firm, they gave $10 million to run this campaign and playbook, they should have given them 20 million.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  It's a good idea.

• 35:35Speaker 00

  Because it's working. This was done so well.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  That MS Now hit his manifesto, it makes you feel great about AI again. Whereas Dario and Sam Altman saying, we got to come up with UBI and like, this is, half of all jobs are going away. That narrative scared everybody to death. And of course you don't want data centers. The data centers are going to wind up in hacking and nuclear bombs and dirty bombs and bioweapons. My iPhoto is going to get hacked. My, my iMessages are going to get hacked. My computer is going to be hacked and we're going to have dirty water and my electrical bill is going up. F this.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  Now, we're just going to turn the whole narrative around. Well done to the PR marketing team at Meta. And I think actually it's a well-written manifesto. It was not written by AI.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  It was definitely not written by AI. I don't think it was written by Mark Zuckerberg. I think it was written by some professionals who came in and polished this because I agree with you. It's very compelling and it's well-written.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  I feel it's his ideas though. He may have had somebody co-write it with him, but I think, to my point earlier, I think he's taking control of the message. I think he actually believes what he's saying here.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Interesting. I think there's definitely ways to read it as cynical, but yeah, it definitely is like...

• 36:49Speaker 00

  What's the most cynical take you'll take here? Because I just gave, I think it's actually how he feels. I think it's actually the direction he's going in. It's good for his business. And I think the most cynical thing I can say is he wants to install data centers and he just wants to explain to people what they're going to get out of it. And it felt pretty even keeled.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think that's the most cynical take is that this is really like a large-scale advertisement for like Meta's agents. Like, hey, we're building all this stuff that you're going to love and it's going to help you and it's going to be built into the apps that you already have. And he's presenting it as, I'm doing a public good. It's a public service intelligence for everyone, but he's really just promoting the, the, the new agent coming to your phone via Meta. I, I feel like that's the most cynical take. I don't know if that's true.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  But I mean, if that's the most cynical take, and they're dropping open source models. Today they dropped Muse Glimmer.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Yes, and Muse Spark 1.2. Yeah, it's coming.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  And, and he's going to do an open weight version of Muse Spark 1.2. You know, the fact that he's releasing open source is proof in the pudding, you know? So I, I look at, like, I'm looking at it trying to be cynical and I don't find myself getting too cynical. I kind of believe him and I think this is the best version of Zuckerberg. I'll say it very clearly. This is the best version of Zuckerberg I've seen in his career. Now, like, my view on his career is irrelevant, but I have seen it from the beginning. And I think this is the most thoughtful approach I've seen him ever take. And he is thinking about the ramifications of what he builds for the first time in the history of the

• 38:27Speaker 00

  company. I think they did not, and they said they didn't, move fast, break things. All we have to do is grow the stock price. All we have to do is grow the user base. Don't worry if we break things. Now, this seems like, hey, here are the things that can break. And then here are the things that could break in your favor as a consumer.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  We're going to work on not breaking things and we're going to break the arc of history and this technology to you. It is a masterclass. Let me just say this to Zuckerberg. This is a masterclass of a manifesto. I give him 10 of 10. No notes.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It takes a techno-optimist sort of view, which I don't think, you, you couldn't really say a lot of Meta releases in the past felt that way. It usually feels like, I'm going to get you super addicted to this feed that's going to make you feel fat and ugly. Like, that's what the Instagram sort of pitch is in a weird way. Like doom, you're going to doom scroll this all day and you won't be able to quit. Whereas this, I think at least we're starting from a more utopian vision of this is going to empower everyday people.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't think anybody feels particularly empowered by Instagram. Maybe, maybe influencers, but other than them. So X has discontinued their revenue sharing program, the Everything Apps RevShare program, as it existed before, will be retired on September 7th. They're already done accepting new signups. In its place, they are introducing the Original Content Rewards Program. New payouts will be based on qualified impressions generated by your original content. Now, this includes posts, blog posts, videos, streams and so forth, but it applies only to, and I'm quoting, "content you have personally created, written, filmed, designed, or produced that reflects your own voice, perspective, and expertise."

• 40:16Speaker 00

  Love it.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  So the, the clear thing they're cutting down on, repos, aggregation, people clipping a second off somebody else's content and then posting a one or two-word response. They're going to start cutting that or cutting revenue going to that, de-emphasizing that in favor of all original content posts. To be eligible for the Original Content Rewards, you must subscribe to X. You've got to be at least 18. You have to have at least 500 verified followers and you have to get 500,000 verified home timeline impressions. That doesn't include replies, just people going to your actual profile over the last 90 days. Now, the old revenue sharing number required 5 million home timeline impressions. So

• 40:58Speaker 02

  this cuts that down. But I did notice there are a lot of people like me who were eligible, got grandfathered in under the old X where it was easier to get to 500,000 timeline impressions. And now they're not going to be eligible. I'm not eligible for the new rewards program. I was eligible for the old one. So we're, we're sort of changing up the dynamic of the people who are going to be eligible for payouts. It's going to be mostly like bigger accounts. So I guess the big question would be, how do you think this is going to reshape X content? And what are the kinds of things on X you'd like to see less of in your timeline that you're hoping this cuts down on?

• 41:37Speaker 00

  This is absolutely fantastic because I was never a fan of like Mario and Kane Koah and all these folks who were just stealing other people's content. A lot of them were offshore, stealing other people's content and... It just was a disaster. They were making large amounts of money off of other people's content. And I know the former head of product who just retired.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Nikita Bier.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  Nikita Bier. He was calling people out on this. And to change the actual incentive is a great idea. We want original content there. Now, I think they just wanted any content when Elon took it over. And it was like, hey, we're going to revenue share. It did get people excited and those people then went and got too excited.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  To the point at which episode of All In drops, episode of Joe Rogan drops. They would just camp on the feed, make 20 clips, present them and get these massive amounts. And I'm assuming they would earn, you know, tens of thousands of dollars in revenue per month. Now, that was good for the platform in one way because that content found its way onto X in video. Although it was coming in either a quasi fair use, but generally illegal way. These were not the owners of the content. Clipping is kind of allowed for commentary, but systematic clipping is not.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  And so what this does is this very thoughtfully gets rid of the systematic clippers. And just says, hey, you can clip stuff. You can, you want to clip, you know, something from Joe Rogan or Tim Dillon? Go, go at it.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:28Speaker 00

  But you're not going to be making money off of it.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  You can't monetize it.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  And it, it, it's going to cut down on the repetitiveness in the feed. Like when a piece of video would really blow up. I actually referenced it in the last, that meme about the casino butter. I don't know if you've seen it. The woman is making the table side steak on a stone. Anyway, when a clip would go viral like that one, you'd see it over and over and over and over again. Cause everybody was trying to clip it, get people to reshare it on their feed and then earn the payout. So if this cuts down on just that alone, it's going to make my feed a lot better, I think.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  And you have to get to your homepage, you like your profile page?

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. In 90 days, so within the, when you sign up, they look at the last 90 days. And if you got half a million original impressions to your timeline, your homepage, you're eligible.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  Somebody clicked on at Jason.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Exactly. And if you didn't, you're not eligible. So I'm, I got through somehow on the old X because I just had enough followers or whatever. So I was eligible for the old version of rev share. But now under the new version, I don't get enough impressions on my profile, which is okay. I'm not on X to make money, so it's fine.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  No.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  I didn't need payouts. I appreciate the money. So for me, it's not going to make a big impact, but I do think it's going to reshuffle a lot of the kinds of accounts that you're seeing as much in your for you. Cause it realigns the incentives almost.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  I like it. I think it's great. I don't know if I'll qualify it.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  You will.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  I have.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  You for sure will.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  I don't know. I don't know about how many people visit my homepage or not. What I do know is this has been a crazy amount of money that I never anticipated, I think. Let me see here, can you see my screen?

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Wow, that's crazy. That, that, that is a crazy amount of, that's over.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  But it's very variable.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  That's over 150K so far in revenue share on X. But this, but here.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  The last two cycles, I guess they do it in two week cycles were 8,000. Then the two before that were 2,000, the two before that were six and five.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Mine's very variable.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  I mean, it's very variable.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Some months I'll get nothing and some months I'll get $500. So it is very variable for, I think for everybody. But here's the other thing. I think you do want to avoid a situation where it's impossible to climb into those ranks. And we're, I, I, I think you don't want to centralize too much of the visibility on just like very large accounts that have millions of people looking at them. You want their, you want, you want people to be upwardly mobile on, on X. I think that's the idea. Like you want, if I come on there and I make five great posts, I should be able to like build a following. Like that's what the magic of it was. You had a lot of like Shaq joins and a million people follow him overnight because he's Shaq. But then there was also like all of like Treebro. You remember that guy like, like Wint?

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Like all these random accounts where they're just, they're really good at posting. And so they got famous for being good at posting. I don't, you don't want to lose those people.

• 46:28Speaker 00

  Uh, I think this will incentivize the right kind of people. This is a more YouTube creator program like.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Uh, program. So, I mean, go for it. It's, uh, the last one was too much of these, um, you know, breaking 911, Wall Street apes. I'm looking at all and wokeness.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  It was very gameable.

• 46:49Speaker 00

  Doge designer who is good, I guess. Disclosed TV.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  It pays off those people that influencers who have like a narrative, like every day I'm going to talk about, like End Wokeness is a great example of like, every day I'm going to post this kind of stuff. All of it individually is going to be the kinds of videos that get a lot of attention. But in the, in the aggregate, it's like, I'm telling a story and I could just hit that beat five times a day.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, I am very tired of King Koa, Mario, Visgard, Breaking 911, Wall Street apes. I'm looking at all these people in my feed who are just, ugh, it's just, yeah. It's, it's not for me and I like this change. And I like the idea that the people who actually make the original content will make the money. And then hopefully they put it back into it. So whether it's Nick Shirley or like, there's a guy I gave a hundred bucks to today with X money. This guy JJ who just reports on crime, uh, in San Francisco. And I always thought this guy served a big purpose because the mayors are like, oh my God, you don't retweet them.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  Like I had one of the mayors of one of these cities literally reach out to me and say, you're not helping by retweeting this guy. And I'm like, uh, bro, I don't live there anymore, number one. Number two, um, that's your problem that you can't get the Honduran fentanyl dealers off the streets who've been there for 20 years selling fentanyl.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Is this the one you said today? Where it's the guy selling steaks? It looks like it's steaks and sneakers they're selling. I didn't see any fentanyl.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  Okay, yes. And that's the, when I saw that, I gave this guy a hundred bucks. This is JJ Smith. And so what, what's happening here? You're like, hey, they're selling steaks, they're selling deodorant. They've got all these things. What they're doing is they're going to small businesses, uh, and even larger businesses. And these addicts go, and there's also gangs that do this. They just steal a bunch of stuff. They go to Market Street, they lay it out and they say, make me an offer four bucks, five bucks, six bucks, whatever it is. But it is institutionalized and tech workers, rich people think they're helping them by buying this stuff. Cause they think, oh, these are like entrepreneurs. No, they're, they're literally gangs that have coordinated this. How did the gangs work?

• 49:09Speaker 00

  They did an incredible expose on this because the feds, long before Trump came in and broke this down. There were a group of, um, gangs. They would go to people who were addicted to fentanyl. They'd say, here's what we're looking for. They show them the pictures. We need razors, we need deodorant, we need this, the stuff that's, you can easily resell. They'd say, go bring it to us, $1, $2, $3. Whatever you grab and run out of there with, we'll give you one, two, three dollars. They go, they grab a bunch of stuff, they leave, uh, they get cashed. They would take that stuff, not sell it there. They would take it to warehouses in Oakland. Then they would drive trucks down to LA, San Diego, Laguna, Riverside, Inland Empire, all those places.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  And then they would resell it to bodegas there, like small mom and pop shops. And they say, hey, instead of buying stuff, we can get it here for $2 for a deodorant. You sell it for four, hey, we all win. The way they beat, the way they caught them was all of these companies started finding their deodorant that was labeled for San Francisco with the serial numbers in San Diego. And I'm like, wait a second.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Hang on.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  They figured it all out. Wait a second. So anyway, I like this idea of also donating money to people. So I've been doing this thing on my, um, X money is out. Did you get X money?

• 50:31Speaker 02

  I did, well, I had to because somebody gave me, uh, $4.20. And so I had to sign up and order it. It was, it was, it was. But also X gives you like 15 bucks. They seed the pot a little bit so that you want to sign up to get your money.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Here's my, uh.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  So yes.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  Here's my account.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  I am on X.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  Everybody's sending me 69 cents, 420, et cetera. I guess the green is when they give it to me.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  And then as you can see, the black here is me giving it to other people. So I've been trying to give this money away as fast as possible to people. And then people keep, this lunatic sent me $420. And I was like, don't do that. But then I just gave it away to other people. So now I'm running a multi-level marketing scam on my X account where people send me 69 and I send them 420. But yeah, pretty funny.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Good stuff happening.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  All right. I mean, my only thought on that is like, that's been a part of big cities since I started living in them. Like people on the street, like it used to be bootleg movies in LA where people would go record the screen and then put it on a disc and then sell you the new movie on the street.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  That was also the mob, by the way.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  Oh, of course.

• 51:34Speaker 00

  That was like either, yeah, they would, when I lived in Brooklyn, it was the, the actual mob. I think it went to other.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  Criminal enterprises. They do it, then they find fences to go sell it on the street. Yeah.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  I'm sure it was organized crime in some way, shape or form, of course.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Oh, well, they basically took the DVDs and said, sell these and bring it.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Even back in Goodfellas days, they're selling the bootleg cigarettes out the back of the truck. Anyway, let's move, let's move on.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Pull up a truck.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, we gotta talk about the Clarity Act. It's facing another big setback. Senate Republicans, this is of course, the crypto regulation legislation that we've been working on for forever. Senate Republicans did not take up the bill before leaving for their August recess. That means it's not going to get debated until September at the earliest, which is going to put the debate about it right ahead of November midterms. And there is a sense among Republicans, for whatever reason, we can discuss maybe why we think this, they don't want to dig into this right before everybody goes to the polls in November to vote. Here's North Carolina Republican Senator Tom Tillis. I do think the odds dropped precipitously of this getting passed. He means we leave for a month. We come back, we've got an election ahead of us. I think it gets difficult to get it done.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  So the bill, just to go over, quick overview, backed by the majority of the crypto industry. Coinbase was sort of not sure they were in. They're back in now. They're supporting it. It provides a legal framework and jurisdictional certainty for crypto companies. Basically decentralized digital communities go to the CFTC and fundraising and investment contracts go to the SEC. And it resolves some basic things about, you know, like can a digital asset, can digital asset service providers offer interest or yields or rewards for your stablecoin balance? And, and those kinds of debates would get discussed. The one real sticking point back and forth that they're still arguing, Dems want to include an ethics provision addressing government officials with ties to the crypto industry.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  You can sort of imagine why Republicans are not as enthusiastic about doing that. So I mean, in your, from.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  Melania coin?

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think that.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  How's your Melania coin holding up?

• 53:39Speaker 02

  That's obviously what Dems want to do is they want to use this as an opportunity to point out Trump and all of his various connections and how much money he's been making from all of these crypto projects. And Republicans feel like, especially ahead of the midterms, that's not maybe the conversation they want to be having. So what do you think, looking at the facts of the ground? I mean, is, is this legislation probably dead? And what impact would that have? I mean, this was kind of a signature Trump effort, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna pass all these crypto regulations.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  I think it's gonna pass right after the elections, probably if this is getting blocked because there's so many donors in the crypto space. So, you know, there's money in politics. I hate to let people know, but there's gambling at this establishment. Was that line from gossip like, I'm shocked that there's.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling in this establishment. Yeah.

• 54:30Speaker 00

  And they're like, sir, your winnings. He's like, thank you. And he puts it in his pocket. You know, they're just, they, all of our government officials have been bought and paid for for years over this legislation. Uh, one of the big donors to both Republicans and Democrats has been the crypto industry. They have used their influence and their, uh, balance sheets to buy this legislation and buy it they shall. They will get it right after the midterms. It's probably just a bump in the road. The thing I care about is, um, how does this work in terms of raising money? Now, the SEC is going to keep jurisdiction over.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Fundraising, yeah.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  Over the fundraising, like initial token fundraising, investment contracts. Well, the CFTC is going to take over once the network is mature and decentralized enough to trade as a digital commodity. I don't understand that part of this. And, you know, how does it work for a startup? So if I start a company and I say, I'm going to sell a thousand membership NFTs to it for a hundred dollars each, and then you're going to get, you're each going to get 1% of the revenue for the first year or whatever, you know, like what am I allowed to do here? And, um, there's going to be some new offering exemption.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  And it's gonna have a dollar cap. So it's going to cap sales at 75 million over a 12 month period and require issuers to file an offering statement. And then some other update to it was let issuers raise the greater of $50 million a year for four years or 10% of outstanding ancillary assets capped at 200 million aggregate with tailored disclosures and full registration. So you're going to have to register with the SEC. Anyway, this seems like chaos and I am very interested in the impact it will have on startups. Like what will startups be able to do in terms of fundraising? Because we did have a number of our startups decide, I'm going to do an ICO. And we were like, uh, is that legal? And they're like, we don't know.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 00

  And, but we're going to do it in Panama with a foundation. And it's a million dollars to set up the legal entity and we're raising 10 million. And I'm like, I've never heard of, uh, starting an LLC or a C corporation costing a million dollars. Or can I've never heard of domiciling it in Panama with a hidden board of directors? Because the board of directors doesn't have security concerns. Like, when I heard this pitch, I was like, you know what? I can't be on the board of this company. I need you to buy me, I literally told the founder, like, once you go to Panama and start an organization with an anonymous board of directors in an organization that I'm an investor in, time for me to go. I am not go, I got three daughters. I got a family. Like, I can't go to jail.

• 57:31Speaker 00

  I can't, I can't go to like.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  It's not, it's not worth it. It's not worth it.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  What are we doing here? Like, why are we, and I asked the woman who is the attorney pitching us on this foundation. Like, why does it cost a million dollars when you could go on to like, you know, any website, if, you know, and sign up to get your incorporation for under a thousand dollars? And she's like, oh, well, it's very complicated and not many people have done it. And I'm like, got it.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:56Speaker 00

  Why haven't a lot of people done this? Hmm. Because it's illegal or sketchy? And then it was just pure sketch. But that's something I would like to have somebody, uh, who's in this explain to us. So if we can put that on our Jake, producer Jacob, our list of potential topics in a future episode. If there's an attorney who understands how this will affect fundraising for startups, I'd love to hear it.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  Claude gave me a little bit of a tip. If you're day one of your crypto startup, you're presumably under the SEC. So if you're launching a token where your team still controls upgrades, treasury, a large chunk of the supply, you're an investment contract asset issuer, all of the usual securities and fundraising rules of the SEC apply. So that's.

• 58:42Speaker 00

  Okay. So no change.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So no change there. Uh, I, we could certainly go deeper with more of an expert than me.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  But what if I, we launch a token, you know, your startup launches a token.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  Right. So.

• 58:52Speaker 00

  After it raises its $50,000 startup fee.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Secondary trading changes the picture fast. Once your token is resold by someone other than you or your agent, it stops counting as a security for that transaction. So exchange listings and liquidity events matter a lot more to your regulatory posture.

• 59:09Speaker 00

  So if I get listed on Coinbase or Kraken and somebody else is selling it, then I'm out of the woods.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 59:17Speaker 00

  But that requires those people to be the gatekeepers then? And.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  Claude even says, real uncertainty remains. It still requires.

• 59:27Speaker 00

  Claude's like, I don't want to touch this.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  Producer Claude's like, yeah, sorry, bro. My name's Claude. Leave me off the pod.

• 59:34Speaker 00

  Talk to, talk to the Panama legal lady. She'll help you out. She'll set you up good.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  Even Claude, I've never seen that before. Even Claude is like, listen, don't, don't, I don't know. I don't want to deal with this.

• 59:44Speaker 00

  Claude went like this.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's true. So good job, Claude. Thanks for that.

• 59:49Speaker 00

  Did that meme.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:52Speaker 00

  That's the hands up, tilt your head.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  Right. I, I, I don't know what that meme is called, but I can picture the guy doing it.

• 59:58Speaker 00

  It's the guy who is the black guy who does like his own talk show where he rates people. They come in and they like, he's sitting in a king chair.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  Wait, is it, is it Drusky? Is that the guy in that meme?

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  I think it's Drusky. Yes. That's, that's the guy. I think it's a Drusky like.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  You're right. No, you're right. It is. And I never, I did not make that formal connection, but you're right. It is Drusky in that meme now that I'm looking.

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  What's that meme called?

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  Let me, let me look up the, the Drusky, Drusky shrug meme.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  I mean, it could be just a Drusky shrug.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  Let's see. Drew, yeah, Drewski shrug, I don't know, or the Drewski hands up meme seems to be what people are trying to do.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  Here it is. That's it. And you see that, that was just what Claude did. Claude's like, you're on your own, son.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  You're on your own. You want to do a crypto.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Samani on your show. I don't know.

• 1:00:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'll figure it out for you. I'm good.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  All right. Sorry, sorry, Claude. I didn't mean to stump you on that. We're calling Claude out. You want to do one more story? We've got some time.

• 1:00:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, keep going.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  Uh, so according to the New York Times, AI agents are helping college students cheat en masse. A new report released on Monday claims that AI is routinely undermining online education. Professors are unable to counter AI-enabled cheating. This is mainly happening, Jason, on courses that they call asynchronous. That means students aren't interacting in real time with their professors or their classmates, even over video or Zoom. They're watching pre-recorded lectures. Apparently with modern AI agents being so advanced now, students can literally give them instructions like login, complete all of my coursework, and the agents will watch the videos, take their tests for them, write their papers for them,

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  even chat with the classmates and fake it about their reading assignments. And several professors interviewed for the article described totally not knowing what's going on with their students and believing that they're spending a lot of time interacting with bots. Here's a community college teacher named Katherine Kaiser. It's just so obvious, those of us who have been teaching for a long time and are editors and writers, can usually recognize the cheaply written AI stuff within 30 seconds, is what she had to say. What is the answer? I'm trying to take the Zuckerberg approach here. Is the answer to this just not have these kinds of asynchronous classes anymore because it's too easy to cheat?

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Yes, that is the answer. Um, there was a professor, uh, and Paul Graham retweeted this.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  I remember this, yes.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  And I think we talked about it, so we'll find that real quick here. And it was, um, very clear to him that people had cheated with AI. So he did the final in person. When he decided to do, um, this, and it might have been Princeton students or whatever, um, but any, everybody's cheating.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  It was Brown University. I found the tweet.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  Okay, so here we go. You look at this. Um, there are, there's a couple of things that happened. I was talking to my nephews, um, and they were telling me about college and cheating and everything. They said during COVID, people made lectures. And one of my nephews was taking a course and he's like, I dropped the course, Uncle J Gal, because the teacher didn't even teach. He just said, watch the video. And then we asked questions, they sink. And I was like, wait, what are you talking about? He's like, oh, they made their entire lectures and recorded them during COVID. And now you're just taking like a, and I'm like, what? You're just basically going to YouTube and taking a course. I was like, exactly.

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  I'm like, well, why are you paying for that? And they're like, I dropped it because you have a moral obligation to at least teach the class. I mean, my lord, this is just so unethical. And if you look at this, uh,

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  So this distribution you're looking at, that the, uh, one side is showing them taking the test using AI, and then he had them come in. So the midterm they took using AI asynchronous at home. And then the final, they had to come in and sit in front of him and actually take it in person. And so you're looking at when these huge gaps are appearing, where somebody clearly did incredibly well with the AI version of the midterm, and then they did very poorly with the in-person exam. The indication is they were cheating using AI. And you can see how few of these students have numbers that are close together, like their at-home performance matched their performance in the classroom. Presumably those are the kids who were cheating.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  Watching, the people on the, the, the number on the right is the midterm, which was done asynchronous, as I said. And if you go to the top, you'll see there's the person, uh, student number one, got a 95.5 at home and a 95 in person. In other words, half a point difference.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:46Speaker 00

  And then it just starts expanding and expanding till you get to student number 22, who got a 59, uh, at home and a 55 there. In other words, they are not the brightest kid in the class, but they didn't cheat.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  They're doing their own work, yeah.

• 1:05:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that's the one you want to hire. Right there, that's, that's the person. That's the person who could become Captain America. Remember Captain America? There's a great scene. I just re-watched Captain America, or at least the first half of it.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  The first one, the first Avenger.

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. And the first one, the guy who's choosing who's going to get the serum.

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  He takes a grenade during training camp. He clicks it, he throws it on the ground, says grenade.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:28Speaker 00

  Everybody runs except.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  Captain America.

• 1:05:31Speaker 00

  For.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  Dives on top of it.

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  Captain America, Steve Rogers.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  Steve Rogers, who is all of like 90 pounds at this point, jumps on the ground, grabs the grenade, and then makes another pump to like hold it in tighter. And it's a fake grenade. It's the greatest scene ever.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, Stanley Tucci, Dr. Abraham Erskine, he's the, he's the researcher.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  It's the other guy from The Fugitive. Here it is.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  Tommy Lee Jones, yeah.

• 1:06:00Speaker 00

  Tommy Lee Jones is the one who comes up with the test.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  And he says grenade. And here they are, they all dive. And one guy, Steve Rogers, that's my guy. And then he does a second pump. Get away. Just to close, just to make sure there's no shrapnel on anybody else. And then everybody realizes, oh, there's one person true of heart, and that's why he can pick up Thor's hammer.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  That's correct. That's, that's like he's deserving of the Captain America serum instead of all the already powerful, strong soldier guys. Exactly.

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  But remember, they said, Thor said, nobody can pick up this except you're pure of heart. Thor's hammer.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  He has to be worthy. He has to be worthy of the ol' near, yeah.

• 1:06:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so he's worthy of it. Um, that's that 59. That's that one student there. The bottom three, by the way, who got zero on the final, they dropped the class. They didn't even try.

• 1:06:51Speaker 02

  As soon as they realized they weren't going to get to use their AI, they were like.

• 1:06:54Speaker 00

  I got 100.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  I'm done.

• 1:06:56Speaker 00

  And a zero.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were, they were out, yeah.

• 1:06:58Speaker 00

  Those are the people who you expel. Those people, you, those people could work in, um, business development, maybe.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Speaker 00

  There's something they could do. There's, there's a job for them. I don't know what it is, but, yeah.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I mean, I, I do, you know, we've had a lot of people who make AI tutoring and education apps. And, and there's always all this sincerity, like there are definite ways to use this to learn and expand your horizons. I've learned a lot from interacting with, uh, AI bots, but it is, you do have to bring that desire to learn to it. You, you can use it very lazily. Just give me the answer. You have to like, bring that with you, that I have desire to iterate and keep using this until I actually learn the material yourself.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Uh, the only thing you really need to know is that, um,

• 1:07:51Speaker 00

  you're only cheating yourself and everybody's cheating in school and the blue books have to come out. Everything needs to be in person. Pop quizzes, reading books in person. I literally went through this with my daughters this summer. They had to read a book. And I said, here's how we're going to do it. I bought like two copies of the book. I said, these are workbooks. They only cost like four or five bucks. I lied to them. Uh, and I said, it's okay to, because they ethically didn't want to write up the books.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  Sure, I get it.

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  But these were like paperbacks. And I was like, girls, these are paperback workbooks. You circle any word you don't know, and I want you to underline the most important sentence on every page in your estimation. And at the end of the chapter, I want you to write a summary on the, in the book of it. And now we read the book. Now retention's gone over. And we call this, um, uh, hand thinking or hand speed. I would talked about it on a previous episode.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  Hand mind, hand mind.

• 1:08:46Speaker 00

  Hand mind.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  You, you borrowed it from Ursula K. Laggan.

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. So hand mind is, your mind is going only as fast as your mind, which is why when I'm sitting here on the podcast, this book is here. Because I like to slowly write one word. Like I wrote one word, Jason Bot, while we were talking. And I said, you know, we should have a bot on Twitter that goes through the show in real time, like we were having our real-time commenter, and just Jason Bot says what we're talking about. We'll post quotes in real time. So if you weren't watching the show, you could just hear quotes from there. And.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Good work.

• 1:09:22Speaker 00

  I, I won't forget it. So there you have it, folks.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  There you have it.

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  Anything else on the docket? We should do lightning round.

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, well, I do. I want to mention, we'll do one more story, but before we get to that, one thing I do want to talk about, just so we can clip it and share it with everybody. We are hiring for the podcast.

• 1:09:37Speaker 00

  We are.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  We have many open positions. There's three that I want to talk about for our purposes on this show. One, we are looking for a new podcast and video editor. You can go to, you could go to careers.launch.co by the way, and look up all of these. That's where you can find all of our job postings. But this one, you can also just email editor@launch or [email protected] and apply to this directly. If you don't want to mess around with the website. So this is, these are people who are going to help us make not just the podcast itself, but make all kinds of great content for all kinds of platforms based on the stuff that we're making for the show. Clip it and put it in TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn. We want to be where everybody is. So that's the podcast and video editor.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  We are also looking for both a senior podcast producer. This is somebody with three to five years established experience making great, high level podcasts like this one. And then we also want a more junior podcast producer. Maybe you're not as experienced, but you're a great writer, a great researcher, and you're very enthusiastic about AI tech startups. You want to learn this world hands on. I mean, you want to set up amazing interviews like we had today with Konst from BitTensor. You're, you're a more junior level person. That's okay. We want to work with you.

• 1:10:56Speaker 00

  But you want to learn.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  But you want to learn.

• 1:10:57Speaker 00

  That energy.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  That's, yes. A passion for what we're doing and an interest. I mean, I think when we've interviewed for this position before, I tend to get a lot of people who are experienced veterans at podcasting, but they're maybe not as passionate about what we talk about. The tech, the AI, computers, startups, being, you know, being a founder. You know, and if you're, if you're not interested somewhat in that stuff, this job might be a little bit of a drag. We're looking for people who are really, they want to learn everything there is to know about starting a company, AI, being in tech. That, that's who we're really seeking.

• 1:11:35Speaker 00

  I mean, if we were forced to start a podcast about like poetry, like maybe we wouldn't wake, well, maybe we would. I don't know. But you, we ideally want somebody with a passion for the subject material and who love the, the technical aspects of the job. This way you're in your sweet spot and you enjoy it.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  Exactly. So for the producer jobs, you can, you can write us at greatproducer or just [email protected] or go to careers.launch.co and find all of the job postings. We'd love to hear from you.

• 1:12:04Speaker 00

  I like when people just email us and just say like, hey, here's what I've done. Here's a link to our LinkedIn and get going from there.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  I did. I wrote a tweet and I wrote, please send us a resume and a cover letter. And people made fun of me because that's not what you do anymore.

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  Okay, boomer.

• 1:12:18Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:12:19Speaker 00

  They're like, okay, boomer.

• 1:12:22Speaker 02

  A cover letter. It did sound a little antiquated, so I've updated.

• 1:12:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a bit antiquated, but you know, listen, it is what it is. We need more people because AI is replacing everybody's jobs, but our business keeps growing and we need more people. Too many sponsors. We sold out the entire year again. We've got this week in AI. We've got, we've got plans to do more. And we're looking for more people. So help us out.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  AI still can't do all of my job. A little bit, not all of it though. All right. One more, one more thing I wanted to talk about before we let everybody go.

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  The second it can.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  Please, please, I'm begging you. Let's let it do my job.

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  I get some sleep. I go back to Italy.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  I'm exhausted. So last thing, Spotify, did you hear about this? They're testing a skip button for their previous subscriber, their premium subscriber, Jason. The button will controversy allow premium users to skip through sections of their favorite podcasts, including the ads, the publisher sold ads, but Spotify is exempting their own ads. So you can't use it to skip through an ad that Spotify sold, but you could use it to skip through like all of the ads that we're putting on our podcast that we're not selling through Spotify because we have our old ad team. So Spotify is saying this is just an expansion of the 15 second skip ahead button, which already exists and which people can already use to bypass their ads.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  And they argue that, hey, if you make podcasts, this is good news for you because listeners are going to be more engaged with podcast content. And their studies show that this keeps people listening to podcasts for a longer time. Still a lot of blowback out there. Tommy Vietor of Crooked Media said, "Very cool of Spotify to try and destroy the podcast industry. What a great partner."

• 1:14:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're going to back down on this one. I'm going to text somebody I know over there who may or may not be in charge.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  Please.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is just dumb. It's dumb. There's already fast forward 10 seconds, right?

• 1:14:20Speaker 02

  15, you could, yeah, you could hit the button and it'll jump 15 seconds. People are already using that to skip the ads.

• 1:14:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you know what? I listen to the ads in these podcasts because the amount of time it takes to take my phone out and hit skip. I'm just like, okay, you know, like I might as well listen to the ads. And you're listening on one and a half speed anyway. Just enjoy the ads, folks, and it pays for it and keeps it free. But for the platforms, like this is a big way to build up resentment. And these platforms need to respect the podcasting standards. And this is one of the things I've been telling them over and over again. Stop breaking the standards. Work with the standards. Work with Adam Curry. Work on Podcasting 2.0. There's two features in Podcasting 2.0 that Spotify absolutely and Apple must respect and use. One is a donate button. The donate button should be set in the RSS feed

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  and it should take you directly to whatever the preferred donation is. So if I want to use PayPal, you want to use Stripe, somebody else wants to use Patreon, just let them have their goddamn button. Okay? And then number two, when we go live, let us drop a live into our RSS feed. You will get that and ping it and then send an alert on our behabes. YouTube does that. Now Spotify doesn't want to keep losing to YouTube, which is where people are starting to watch podcasts and where podcasts are spending more time. Don't do things like this. Spotify should be in the corner of podcasters and for open standards because YouTube is a black box. YouTube doesn't do any of the standards. They don't use RSS feeds, all that kind of stuff.

• 1:15:50Speaker 00

  And you know, where are we going to spend our time is what they need to ask themselves because the difference between using Spotify and YouTube and putting it in your pocket and listening to the background? Is there a difference?

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  It's getting pretty negligible. I mean, I think my, my biggest concern with the whole podcasting ecosystem is that it feels like increasingly we're centralizing it in just a few platforms. Podcasts, it used to be like you could get a show wherever you wanted. It was going out on this feed. You could pick it up from an independent service. You could listen on Himalaya. You could listen on iTunes. You could listen on Spotify, wherever. And now it feels like YouTube, Spotify, and maybe Netflix. If you get big enough, Netflix will pick it up. And that's it. Like we're, we're sort of cutting down on all these other places and Apple and Apple Podcasts. But it feels like it used to be this like huge landscape of, of different varieties and where you could get your podcasts. And I don't know why we'd get rid of that. Like Spotify is not threatened by small independent platforms. What do they care?

• 1:16:47Speaker 00

  I'm just writing a tweet now. Why doesn't X support RSS feed, RSS feed slash podcasts?

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  For years, that was just the standard podcast.

• 1:16:54Speaker 00

  I should be able to have a tab on my profile page with my pop, my latest podcast.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's, that used to be how, that was the whole point.

• 1:17:06Speaker 00

  This would be insanely effective.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  You're broadcasting to people's iPods. That was the whole idea, like.

• 1:17:13Speaker 00

  Yes. It's just so annoying when people try to break standards. And I told this to Spotify when I met with them during South by. And I was like, just please stop breaking the standards and please support the new standards. Like the reason Spotify has so much extra traffic is because of the podcasting standard. Why would you want to break that? You're just working against yourself and it really pisses off people like me who have a number of podcasts and like, it really makes me feel bad about my relationship with Spotify. And a lot of podcasters don't like Spotify, a lot, because they don't give us the controls we want. And then they don't support standards and they need to listen more. Spotify needs to listen to podcasters more.

• 1:17:57Speaker 00

  And Apple is kind of like not as engaged as they once were. They, they kind of went dark for a little bit, but they're getting back, they're realizing podcasting is a good business for them. And they're starting to, I think they got some new leadership over there. They're starting to pick up the phone and call people again. They're starting to feature podcasts and they're realizing this is a good way to keep people on their iPhones. And so, you know, take, take from that what you will, Spotify. YouTube, Apple, you, you gotta kind of, you know, be in our, be in the podcasters corner. Don't do things against podcasters.

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  A little behind the scenes, it's also Spotify makes it very difficult to do your distribution unless you use their tool. We're going through this behind the scenes right now where we tried to switch our distribution. And many of you in the audience wrote to us and said, it broke things all over Spotify. It's like, you could just make that easier.

• 1:18:51Speaker 00

  Well, that was because of video, right?

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  Yes, it was because of video. Well, it's, it's also reporting, like they want, they, if you don't use their own distribution platform, it's much harder to get your analytics. And it's like, well, just, just let us have our analytics. That's how we sell our ads, Spotify.

• 1:19:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. This is another important note for them. Like guys, gals, fellas, ladies, just don't be heavy handed. And sometimes it's not even heavy handed. They're just like, oh, we'll get to it. No, make it a priority to support open standards.

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:19Speaker 00

  Make it a priority to support the ecosystem that you've gained so much from. Nobody has gained more from podcasting than Spotify.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  It's like they, that they, their business is just like this app, you know? Like there is no Spotify without people making amazing things to listen to in Spotify.

• 1:19:35Speaker 00

  I appreciate Spotify is out there, but I don't feel appreciated by Spotify.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  Sometimes if Dylan comes out with like a new single or something, I'll send it to my brother, the Spotify link, but that's.

• 1:19:44Speaker 00

  No, no, I'm saying like, I don't share our podcast.

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:19:46Speaker 00

  Because we don't feel love from Spotify, I tend to share the YouTube or.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  X or Apple or yeah.

• 1:19:55Speaker 00

  Or the Apple. Yeah.

• 1:19:58Speaker 00

  I would like to be more, I would have a better feeling about Spotify. Yeah. I don't, I don't want to just get invited to Spotify parties. That's nice, but I am not like Spotify parties nice.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  Limited appeal. Yeah.

• 1:20:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. Just support standards, please.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:12Speaker 00

  Make it a priority. That's all. Make it a priority. All right. We'll see you all next time on this one. Bye bye.