Ep. 199: Pulp Friction

I, V, M. and on Simplified has been like a dream of mine over the last couple of years. I have dropped several hints, some starting with very subtle ones, later it became not so subtle asking, will you have me as a guest? I am free to come to my heart, reply to my email, but finally it worked.

I'm really, really glad to be here. Yeah, I mean, it's not for nothing. I'm getting two years free. I was just saying this is actually a very special episode because it's the 199th, so we were saving you for that.

And like the cultural angle I bring to this is some knowledge of the Bible. So if you're familiar with the miracle at Kana, it's basically where Jesus turned water into white and promptly lots of mallelues became christian voting. So the takeaway there is basically the Jesus turns water to wine after all the guests are drunk and the sky comes and says, you know, what have you done? You normally serve the good alcohol at the beginning and then use of the cheap one you've done the other way around.

So that's what we've done with episode 199, VJK who's holding a bottle of wine which he claims contains water is here. And he's not just the CEO of the Kim, he runs the most popular weekly newsletter that exists now that Chuck and I shut down the search. It's called the nutgraph and it's been extremely perceptive and probably one of the only things that I read every week. So we are indeed fortunate to have the one in VJK after this intro.

We put in a pressure on you to sort of take it away. This is really, really nice guys. Thank you so much. And also the Ken has a new podcast, right?

Which is unofficial sources which I think Praveen has been instrumental in setting up. And the only difference between the nutgraph official sources and yours is that it's still irreverent. It's still funny. We like to do our fact but we can make jokes about IAMK Alkita without being threatened by our audience.

I will not offer any comments about institutes of repute. But yes, we do have a podcast. It's called unofficial sources. I play a very small part in it.

It's mostly held by this wonderful, wonderful person who joined the Kim and his son, which started off as an intern. And she actually wrote back to us after she finished her intern, she finished her college saying, hey, I think I would like to do a podcast with you. And I'm like, that's actually not a bad idea. So she came in and she's been doing a lot of very well.

So yes, it's early days. We're very excited. Our goal is to become the second most popular podcast in India because everyone knows we cannot be. I mean, as well as the scene in the unseen.

And more importantly, I think for people who are not familiar, this is a free podcast. Right. And that's why I don't need a free podcast. For now, as it comes with a bit of a threat.

It's only free for my latest. All right, great. So what we wanted to talk about today and bring in PGK for is something that we don't really understand too well. And it's really small list.

We are talking about just a few million items. Yeah. So there's that joke. No, there are two books.

One is everything that they teach you at Harvard Business School and the other one is called everything that they don't teach you at the Harvard Business School. And between those two books, some total of the universe is there. But anyway, so this is one of the medications where we have PGK and one of the medications where PGK is actually in support of Facebook, which is like, thank, thank, we need to play some on this music. So I think it's called the media bargaining code and Australia known for doing weird things like inviting people to the gabber has done some strange things here.

Can you simplify this whole thing for us? Yes, don't you? Let me just put out this idea outside that you and I can work at podcast, just you and I can be. Okay.

All right. But back to Australia. Okay. Here's a very, very simple summary of what happened.

I'm going to start off with this thing that I call the hook, which is that something really interesting happened around two to three weeks back. If you were in Australia and you opened up Facebook and you basically said, Oh, this is a news of something that I really liked and really enjoyed. And let me share it with my friends and you put it on Facebook. Any news article, let me stress not just news article that is in Australia, not just Australian publications.

If you're in Australia, you could take an article from the New York Times or even again and put it out there. And if you hit share, you will see the pop up that comes and the pop up leads. And I'm going to read out this pop up because it's very interesting pop up. It says headline.

This post can't be shared. I'll leave you to consider this one. This is not Facebook. I can't be shared.

I've never heard of anything that can't be shared on Facebook. And below that, it says in response to Australian government legislation, Facebook restricts the posting of news links and all posts from newspapers in Australia globally. The posting and sharing of news links from Australian publications is restricted. That's it.

Well, okay. All right. So what actually happened was Australia decided to go forward with this legislation that Tony that you correctly called is called the media bargaining code. The media bargaining code is a very strange legislation.

I think globally, and a lot of tech companies are also used to all kinds of legislation. Like there are people who are out there trying to break up tech companies and they become too big and too powerful. There is antitrust that says that, okay, not only are you too big and too powerful and you break up, but you have a monopoly in some areas and you have to figure out ways to get rid of this. You could find on you or you are, you have to moderate the content that you have.

So things like that. These are all things that people are familiar with. All of these tech companies understand at some level that this is going to happen. The media bargaining code is none of that.

The media bargaining code is just one country that says, listen, you are Google and your Facebook, all of these articles that are being shared on your platform. Whenever you share it or whenever any user shares it and clicks on that link or that link is shared, you have to pay this newspaper something because what you're doing is you are using the newspapers content on your platform and how can you do that? That is the media bargaining code. Okay, that's very strange because all of the content on Facebook anyway is owned and created by someone else and Facebook definitely doesn't want to do anything with it very clearly because they don't want to even bring in content moderation and stuff like that.

So what's the genesis of this? Why would this law even come about it? It just sounds very bizarre. Yes, and this law is really bizarre because you're right only.

That one part is exactly that which is that well, Facebook says this is all user generated content, etc. So there has always been some tension between Australia, the country and its news publishers and Facebook, the company. So there's a story. It's a little apocryphal in the sense that, well speaking as someone who works in a media organization, it was reported and through sources, etc.

And then later, basically, I think it was sort of an off the record conversation that somebody sort of like slightly put a news article, but here's the story. So the story is that around a few years back, Facebook basically looked at this entire thing that was going on with them and said, okay, it looks like the tide is turning against us, news organizations are turning against us, etc. So let's try to do something proactive about it because even the media industry is sort of dying and sometimes they look at us and say, look, you are the cause for this. So let us try some way to help them out.

So whether it was they hired this lady, her name is Campbell Brown. So if you don't know Campbell Brown, Campbell Brown was one of the top news anchors in the US. I think she was with NBC or what might be wrong, maybe on one or two channels. And Campbell Brown came onto Facebook as their, I don't know the exact designation, but I suspect it was something to do with news partnerships or something like that.

And Campbell Brown flew to Australia and she met the heads of all the publishers of major news papers in Australia. And it was a meeting that was supposed to be off the record. And in that meeting, it was a very contentious conversation where obviously the news publishers were telling Facebook that, okay, losing a lot of revenue because of you, thanks to you people who don't even visit our website and you have taken away all our ad dollars, etc, etc. And somewhere in this contentious conversation, Campbell Brown is allegedly reportedly supposed to have said that all of you, that is the newspaper industry in Australia are all dying and you're all going to die.

And if you're basically want to work with us as Facebook, it'll be nice. Otherwise, I will hold your hand in the hospice as you lay there on your deadbed, which of course got reported because considering that it all this happened, but it has begun from there. This happened like, I think two to three years back. And I think media in Australia essentially said, okay, let's see if we can do something about this.

It's very unusual in countries for media companies to completely band together. Now that is possible in Australia, simply because Australia is home to the greatest media magnet in the world. And his name is Rupert Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch's newscorp, which is right now a global empire, started off in Australia and he has very strong powerful connections, deep rooter connections in Australia. So led by a newscorp, a lot of these new publishers, lobby successfully.

And I have not seen media lobby successfully for anything in any government, anywhere in the world, but apparently it happens in Australia. Now the news in media in Australia is also government lobbying the media on the other hand. That is apparently all the time. Or the government pleading the media as something that is like to be discarded and thrown at the site.

That also happens all the time. In countries, not me, but who knows which country. So what actually happened over here was that the reason why these media organizations were able to exercise a lot of control and I read this article in the Guardian where I said, okay, where does this power come from? Sure, you may have to put one off, sure, you may have a newscorp, but what gives you so much power to lobby an entire government.

And it turns out that the Guardian did like a four part series on this a couple of years back, where it says that in Australia, the news media has a disproportionate amount of power. And I think the article essentially said that the news media specifically Mr. Murdoch and newscorp, etc, were very powerful and instrumental in getting rid or influencing the positions of at least two to three prime ministers of Australia, where you can basically decide, okay, this particular person, let's start running our stories, which may be like against them, etc. And the person is out.

So legislators know this, they know that you do not want to cross these people. So I suspect that may have played a part. So I think then they came up with this legislation to completely backwards. And the first reaction, just hold on one question is how much of this is factual, like the traffic to new sites have reduced because of Facebook, I assume it's the opposite right now we've got way more backlinks to your website as opposed to yes, not having the wait on.

Yes, in fact, I don't think it's about traffic at all. I think it's just about driving. I think they're basically trying to say that because you're losing advertisers and all the advertisers you seem to have. So obviously it's all your fault, even though you're sending traffic.

In fact, what you're saying is exactly what Facebook's argument is, Facebook's argument is, listen, this is completely backwards. Let me show you the amount of traffic we have sent to your down-use papers at websites and we have not charged you for it. This is stuff that we sent to you for free. In fact, the first place we need, I think Facebook had, they basically sought a pass by the question we said, listen, we are the magnanimous ones here.

We are the ones who are not taking money from you. And now you want money from us as some, there is some Russian mean with you. They're saying that you're so beautiful. Okay, that's the same here.

But yeah, but that's the story. Very interesting. One can see it from the media point of view, right? So what actually pays for reporting and expensive, right?

And what really pays for it is ad revenue. And if you take that away, your only alternative is to charge the customer subscription fee, which hasn't really worked anywhere in the world. And if the media, you know, it folds up, there's not going to be any reporting anymore. Yeah, I mean, I could put on just on the screen by the way.

But yeah, I was just saying like there are two cases, right? One global, which is how the new off time actually switched our subscription model and right here in our little Zoom window, prevene go paltry, in very successfully running the can, because when the can started out in India, I was like one of the days here saying, you know, who is going to pay for news and stuff like that. But the fact that these guys have pivoted and, you know, basically, there are multiple things, one is that if you're paying for news or insights, then you automatically produce good journalism in that respect, right? Not just about impairing whatever is happening across the world.

The other thing is that as news organizations or media gets bigger, it's impossible for them to remain independent as well. So if you are going to rely on advertising like this, that has it also. But on the other hand, you know, when advertising was relevant to digital media was when it was directly translated from offline media, right? I'm paying you for column inches, which is drastically changed now because targeting and stuff like that is going to lie in the hands of whoever has the most amount of data or whoever is given data by you.

And that is obviously going to be the Facebook and Google to the world, right? So I think that model was anyway about to die and it was just being accelerated. Yeah. So there are like three broad nuances to this.

I'm just going to describe all three very quickly. So first, knowing your completely correct, which is that it's true that publishers and news publishers over time, because they were completely print-based, you had like a local power that you had. So the only way you could anyone who was an advertiser who could access a local population was through newspapers. So fundamentally, it was a very symbiotic relationship.

I write for my readers and as an advertiser, you come and you access that. Now the internet changed all of that. Now, the internet, it was basically in there is a great article by Ben Johnson, a strategy that he talks about publishing and how the internet changed it. And what it was, it made basically supply infinite, which meant that you could go to like a million websites across anywhere in the world and read it.

So you don't have to be in New York to read New York Times, New York Times is now for the world. The converse of that is if you're a small publisher saying, Dallas, then why would you want to go to the Dallas newspaper and put an ad over there when I can just find out what people in Dallas are doing on the internet and just show those ads. So that's the first thing that ends up happening. The second thing is in general, whenever this shift has happened in the internet, the people who have always won are in terms of the advertising thing almost always the platforms.

Google has emerged, Facebook has emerged, and I say this to someone who has done ad tech for five years and tried to build ad tech products. I think what is this feeling of pride on your face? You know, this is a great thing, basically says that the smartest people in the world are just trying to figure out people to click on ads and I just want to see people say that. So no, but then what ends up happening is actually a great business for a platform player.

It's great for some kinds of publishers. So if you're like a gaming publisher, if you're like a mass publisher, it's possible. News, I'm not entirely sure. It doesn't look like it's possible.

For a long time they said that BuzzFeed would be the next big thing. It didn't really work. So that's the first one. The second one is that yes, one way to think about it is that the news publishers hate and blame Facebook for it, but only after they used Facebook for several years in order to further their goals.

So for instance, there was this very famous thing around four years back when everybody would ask everyone in every board meeting in every strategy meeting, which is what is your Facebook video strategy? And that is just this time where Facebook had taken about everybody's lives and everybody looked like you needed to have a Facebook video strategy. That pivot to video became this big thing. And a lot of people did that.

But Facebook is the one that after like years when they started leaving off Facebook, Facebook decided to turn off the tab. And the reason why Facebook turned off the tab was exactly after the 2016 election. So once the 2016 election happened, everybody turned on Facebook and said, this is all your fault. And then Facebook said, okay, so I guess I will have to do less of this.

And they did less of this. And they're like, hey, this is also your fault. And they're like, okay, but what do you want me to do? So that was the second one.

So there's this point where Facebook started out, it's sort of predo was move fast and break things. And I think post 2016 suddenly it turned into break fast and move things like you have to wake up every day to a new problem and fix it up. Yeah, but all these things sort of combined. And that's the reason why now they have decided, okay, it's time to like try to get some money out of them.

And if we can't do it, and we can't ban them because that's one of the counterproductive, we can't force them to change the algorithms because that'd be more complicated. What if we asked them to pay us? Okay, I think that's the thing. Yeah, and Australia's you only want to have come up with this or is it like, you know, there are like, there's a variant of this that's happening in Europe with Google.

And that is little more nuanced to be fair. And that is about specifically with Google news, where basically a lot of people are putting pressure on Google to say, look, if you're using Google news as a platform, then you're getting people that perhaps you should be start paying news publishers, slightly more nuanced. And I think it's not exactly like, but there is a cousin if that makes any sense. Yeah.

And even in Australia, Google, I think, had a different approach to this. Yes. So what is happening was once they started doing this code, of course, everybody decided to play hardball at first, like Facebook was the one who threatened several times, and we will stop this, we'll stop, nobody believed they could do it, and finally they did it. And then we want to stop and they did it.

Google, on the other hand, did this thing where they actually went and signed a deal with I think two or three of the biggest publishers in Australia. And it was basically this deal that paid some lump some money over several years in order to do this. And obviously one interpretation of it is that there was an extortion attempt and obviously Google decided that, you know what, maybe they're better off being a ransom to secure our future. That's one interpretation.

That's my interpretation. It's one interpretation. But there's also this great one. So why Google did this?

And the reason why Google did this also, if you think about it, it is not completely based on principles, it's also based on product because this thing where, oh, you cannot share links on Facebook, something that Facebook can do. Google can't do that because as far as Google is concerned, that search bar is everything. If you go there and you search for something, the best results have to show up. It doesn't make sense from Google's perspective to say that if the best result is a new site, I'm just going to black out all the new site.

And that is going to reduce the utility of my product overall. They can't afford to do that. And it's a little more complicated because it's not just about sharing uslings about what is the news now is this news. So it's not simple.

So I think Google actually had little choice considering the way that it goes. I also think that Google probably has some experience in monetizing clicks. They do that for YouTube. So the more people click on your video, the more money you get, maybe they can think of something like that for news articles as well.

So they do that. In fact, that will be a win. But they do that even today. So let's say, for instance, if you click on say a Google ad for something, and so basically, of course, Google takes some part of the money, but some part of the money obviously goes to like the book.

In this case, you're right now. In this case, the Google is the publisher itself. But let's say, for instance, there are Google ads that show up. It's all adsense.

Let's say you have the website and you have these like Google ads that show up in the corner with like adsense. And if someone clicks on in the publisher gets money, I remember in the early 2000s or the mid 2000s, maybe 20 members, where a lot of people got into blogging. I don't know why I said 20 members. It's not in his way.

Okay. I'm sorry. Brilliant blog. That's true.

Actually, yes, not in my way. That's true. Both of you will remember this. That goes to time where I don't know if you know this is where people are visiting start a blog.

Yes, I'm pligs. And after some time, suddenly a check will appear in your mail set by Google and it will be for the grand sum of $9. Somebody said that they got a check after like some four years or something, it was like some small amount and they're like, okay, this is what this is the money I'm making after all of this. Yeah.

Might as well scratch Google Pay coupons or something. But even Google is slightly backwards, right? Like where you where content owners have to pay Google to appear higher and such rankings. And now you're actually going and paying someone who wants the content to feature their content.

So yeah, I think you're just paying someone to basically make sure that the content can continue to okay, it's a very strange relationship. And I think the best way how it was described to me and I read this somewhere I wrote a little bit about this was how what is fundamentally happening at the very core core fundamental. If you look at this entire thing and say what is really happening, it is that you are actually applying a tax to a link. I mean, that is the fundamental thing that's happening.

The basic premise of the internet and this is also what Tim Berners-Lee went and he spoke I think in front of some this thing in Australia and England or something I don't remember and of course people were like, how are you? What do you know about this? And he said, I invented this. Okay, and he basically said that you know, a very fundamental thing about the internet is that links are free in the sense that I have a blog or I have a website and I put a link and that link goes to somewhere else.

There is no transaction involved between the person putting the link in person to see the link. And now what is happening is you are not taxing links. It's like a core physics part of the internet where you are sort of like twisting in a different way. And it has implications.

We don't know what those implications are. The chain is only as strong as the weakest link. Sorry. Well played.

Wonderful. Yeah, so then what happened? Like people can still share or no? Right.

So what ended up happening was that for a while they couldn't and everybody lost their minds and then what ended up happening was people started posting stuff, saying what happened in Facebook was like, well, I told you I do this. And then what there was this great graph I saw somewhere. I think it was on Twitter or some one of my subscribers emailed it to me on the social traffic that's coming from Facebook for all the major new publishers in Australia and that just plummeted. I mean, it was already like going down from like 2014 after 2016 when the chain that I got into really started falling for a lot of publishers.

But when they obviously shut off, links sharing it just like falls off a cliff. And that must have spoke to a lot of people. So it's not entirely clear what happened behind the scenes. But the fact remains that a few days after the link sharing was disabled, Facebook is really unable to get for Australia.

And it seems like there are some news reports that suggest that there is some kind of agreement that has been reached between Australia's legislatures and Facebook around the wording of the legislation itself. Rumor the legislation is not just law yet. It's right now still in the lower house or something, but it'll almost certainly get passed. Although in Facebook did this initially, the immediate response from Australia was like all over the place.

Essentially, what happened is yeah, they call it, yeah, these are three words that I found a lot. Okay, one, the one word that I found a lot was bullying. This is a form of bullying. How dare you?

Okay, another word I found a lot was this is a form of stealing. You are by shutting off links on Facebook. What you're doing is you're stealing, revving you by the traffic that we can get as news publishers. The third word is the big one because the first one was like, so we should get a third one that is even bigger and the third word was the big c word, censorship.

How dare you censors. So yeah, so these are the things that are happening initially. I think the Australian prime minister went out and made a statement. I mean, I didn't even understand.

Okay, so very strange things are like, okay, no, let's not do that. Okay. But the Australian prime minister went out and made a statement. It was like, why out there?

Anyway, so this happened. And yeah, so then after that, as I was saying, Facebook obviously then re-enabled everything. I think the understanding is there was some agreement that the legislation will give them some kind of a levy where it's not like, okay, you have to pay X and there is a type, you know, maybe there is like some kind of other mechanisms that make sure that it's a little more fair and some judicious. The same.

My personal view is I don't think it's like a big win for Facebook, but it is probably the only way that both parties would have come out of it saving some fees. Okay, like what is Facebook's incentive to turn it on? I mean, Australia, I don't think it's that big as market anyway. Like Australia is not just the biggest market, even news is a very small percentage of the market.

So in fact, they have gone and put press reports saying that, look, this is just a problem that's not worth having. Only 4% of the links that I shared on Facebook are news links, which actually tells a lot about Facebook. Okay. Okay.

Because that's what I'm about to do. I imagine the remaining 96 is probably. Yeah, videos and maybe pictures. Exactly.

Which is what people want to see anyway. It's like, I'm just probably not a back thing. But anyway, so I personally think what is Facebook's incentive? I don't know.

I just think Facebook is just basically trying to pick its battles and essentially saying that, okay, we already have a lot of battles fighting in lots of places. That's one. The other thing that started really worrying Facebook was how Australia started to drum this up and started saying that because this is censorship, because it's all of these things, it started to go a little more international. There was a news article that had come out where the Prime Minister of Australia had said that I'm going to make this international, I'm going to find people who think, I mean, basically convince other people about what Facebook is doing.

And he made a few calls and one of the people already shared it. No, okay, unfortunately. No. So I think there was a news article that basically said how the Prime Minister of Australia, I should actually tell his name.

I'm not saying. I'm not saying. Scott Morrison. Scott Morrison.

Scott Morrison. made a call and one of the people who called was the Prime Minister of India. I think the Prime Minister and he basically told him that I imagine he aired his grievances. It's not clear what the response was.

It may have been like, you know, just politely listening. It may have been, this is not a bad idea. Okay, it may have been any of it. We don't know.

But I suspect these things sort of spooked Facebook. I feel it's a good name dropping strategy. Absolute. I'm more than a person named to drop.

I think if Scott Morrison had said I call Joe Biden, Facebook, I'm like, okay, that's fine. I mean, considering Facebook's ambition in India is presence in India and all of these things that want to do in India, maybe who knows? It may have said, you know what, let's not get ahead of us. It's okay.

Let's get a little bit of this. I'd also at some level, Facebook has a probably realized that it has a horrific penchant for doing absolutely stupid things for their own image. Like this neutrality thing. I cannot think of a more embassy.

Whoever's done the net. All it got, it was caught on their face. That's it. Even if they had succeeded, they wouldn't have, you know, it is just completely stupid thing.

They don't need it. It's not going to increase that revenue in any meaningful way. It's just Facebook being evil. That's all.

That's what it looks like. Right? So they don't want that to happen here. They don't want to come out looking evil.

Yeah. You're not going to know the free basics that happen. You're right. I mean, that was, in my opinion, that was a classic like a Western American company saying, Oh, here is a country that what can we do for these impoverished people?

Do this. I think that's the approach they took, which obviously didn't work. I know it's probably a dumb approach. I tend to work with people that dumb approach.

However, the very, very interesting part about this particular episode and this entire thing that happened with Facebook and Australia is, and I think somebody was tweeting about this. I think it was Benedict Evans, who is also used to be like a commentator. He has this great thing that he said that this episode is actually a great litmus test about whether tech journalists are people of principles or whether they are just out to bash and hate Facebook, no matter what Facebook does. And I think that was actually, I think there is some truth to that because in this particular episode, 199, great.

We are not going to talk about it for a long time. No, this episode, this Facebook. Okay. But yes, but yeah, but he basically said that.

And I think I do agree because in this particular case, I think it seems like it's very hard to argue that Facebook was did something really wrong or even in this particular instance. It doesn't seem like it. It just seems like it's not true. Things which don't benefit them really.

And yet end up looking like evil mastermind, you know, the kind that James Bond would sort of quote young ladies, destroy them and whatever James Bond does. Yeah. You know, at some level, I agree, but at some level, there's a deep small part of me, feel some kind of sympathy as well. I tell you why, because I have also seen the things that have tried really hard and fail.

So for instance, I don't know if you know this, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg spent an amount of time, I know you've spent an important amount of time. I don't know if he still does it learning Chinese, how to speak Chinese. I imagine he thought at some point that, oh, this is actually going to help me try to convince the people in China to let Facebook into China. I might just be part of the equation, but I suspect, I mean, a cynical part of me thinks that maybe Mark Zuckerberg in his empire at his evil tower thought, how do I get into China?

Oh, I learned that language. Okay. So he's my part of that. Trump, he also had like presidential ambitions.

Exactly. That's the other thing. He was traveling to 50 states, he was putting his photos. Yeah, he had this entire thing going on like the thing that I described, it was almost like Zuckerberg was running like this humans are Bombay Peach across the US.

Here is in Alabama. I met this small couple. These people are small business owners. Oh my God, I was touched.

Okay. What are you doing exactly? So yeah, some really, but that takes work and that takes some amount of you know, some amount of belief in this. So in some way, I do feel kind of sympathetic.

I feel sympathetic about that position in India, especially on WhatsApp and WhatsApp pay. I feel sympathetic towards them because I feel like it's very clear why WhatsApp pay didn't take off for such a long time, at least for a lot of people seems very clear. Why? Come on.

I mean, I mean, also the other thing is that the one thing that they seem to have put their reals taken around and said we will not, this is where the line is and we will not back down from it is end to an encryption on WhatsApp as well. Yeah. But it seems like they say, look, no matter who you are, no matter what you do, you know, whatever you want, this is something we will not writing push on. I'm not saying that it's a great principle, but it's at least something that's their time.

Yeah. I can have something like completely, I mean, unrelated in the sense to this episode, but like, how do then, you know, WhatsApp chats end up with authorities and stuff like that, if it's all like, it's like leaked by friends. So, I mean, my understanding is two things. Okay.

Two parts of it. Part one is it's obviously a WhatsApp chat is like, let's say you and I WhatsApp each other and we WhatsApp each other really like horrible, seditious things, Tony, which we don't buy the business. I'm sure people are listening. I'm sure people are listening.

No, we don't do any of that. But let's say we did. And so what would happen is if one of us gets arrested, the first thing that they do is they take the phone, the police officer takes the phone and opens up WhatsApp and uses that as a way to you know, leaks that out there. So, I'm always actually take the really just brute force.

That's what we get. That is actually, yes, it's at one level. It is fundamentally brute force. I mean, think about it.

It's not more sophisticated. That's one. The second way, as I understand it, which is a slightly more sophisticated way is that your WhatsApp chats, if you had backed it up and say, at least I have an iPhone, so it gets backed up in iCloud, that is possible. Then what happens is let's say, for instance, somebody quote unquote hacks your iCloud or if they go to Apple with a quote order that says that we want this iCloud thing back and give it to us.

Maybe they comply. I'm not sure. Possibly that's another way. And backups are not encrypted.

And they be clear about it. What is that if you go to the backup section? Okay. Back to where we were.

So, yeah, I don't know if this is the right place to say this, but Tony and I have been like the two vanguards on a lot of places on I don't know if Narain Sir knows this on Twitter on Facebook on a lot of places where I don't know if you ever wondered whether sometimes secretly Facebook is listening to you. So sometimes people basically are talking to their friends about something on the phone. The chat comes on Instagram, or Facebook, like, oh my god, I was just talking about having a baby and here there is a pregnancy test. How could they know?

Are they listening to my microphone? And I think Tony and I are the only two people who basically have to go on Instagram to people know they don't know that. I was the one guy who got 100% convinced because of you guys on that. Because it's so easy.

I mean confirmation bias is so strong. It affects the best of us. That's where my sympathy for Facebook also falls. It's a really simple thing to say that no, we don't do it.

Just state it. I've even interacted with Facebook as someone who uses their ad tech. And even their client servicing managers refuse to say it. I'm like, dude, we don't do it.

Just say it. Why would you say it? What's the big deal? So interestingly, because I am, like we said, we had many a Twitter debate about this with several people over and over again.

I keep an eye on it. And whatever is on, I mean, we've all explained this, something called the Badder main phenomenon, not a recency bias or whatever. The greatest one was listening to an episode of no such thing as a fish. And they're talking about something called put smyster, which is basically like a concrete mixer or something.

And like 100 feet from me, there's a put smyster like for the first time I'm seeing in my life. And I'm like, okay, Facebook is definitely not placed this year. So yeah, but confirmation bias and all of this is very real. And Facebook doesn't listen to your microphones if anyone really does.

But I've given up that battle long ago. And the whole thing, the beauty is Facebook doesn't need to write. When it's got the kind of information it does about its listener, those users, it's going to be right about their likes and preferences, whatever, a picture of the time. So there's all statistics and data analysis and automation and telling us whatever it is.

Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of misconceptions about attic. I think one thing is exactly what he said, which is that it is much harder and inaccurate to try to listen to someone and then try to say, Oh, based on this, these are the ads that we can do. I mean, Facebook doesn't need to do that.

It just needs to see what nonsense you're clicking every day. It's not going to be like quite a bit. That is probably more accurate. And that's one.

And I think the other few other misconceptions that exist in attic is that people believe that their personal quote unquote personal information is extremely valuable to these companies. And they collect everything. But the thing is, your personal information is surprisingly not that valuable. In fact, the best, if you look at segments that work really well and all that, it's extremely rare that, you know, oh, you like Kanye West or hence, you're going, let's okay, you like Kanye West, so be it.

But you are a male, you are an engineer, you are from here and you're even Bangalore. You are going to buy this. Let me show this to you. So that is more effective than, you know, detail preferences.

So yeah, but to come to your point only, if you basically want to know why Facebook is not talking about it, here's my hypothesis, my hypothesis is essentially this. You're right. It's very simple. You might as well just come out and say deny and say, look, we don't do this.

I think they did it in one press release, but didn't do much of it. I suspect that because it's a combination of both of you said, which is a Facebook is like really spoke and worried and be very bad at communication and PR. So what probably the lawyers must have said was listen, if you deny it today, then what you have to do is at some point in time in the future, if you decide to collect, even like it's mentioned, then you have to come out and say, okay, now we have started collecting. Why say anything at all?

Keep quiet only. And then it would be like that is flawless. Let's do that. That's probably the reason.

No, we know Facebook will start doing it if Snapchat starts. It's like something I, but I'm not exactly, but this is something that happened in the S prime ministry right now. One of the bureaucrats says, you don't want people talking about it. So Bernard, really asked why?

So he says, you know what will happen if people actually start talking about it? He says, what? Eventually they start thinking about this. I think yes, Prime Minister and yes Minister is like, there's something that I've watched.

I've seen like these two clips here and there. I mean, I mean, I'm in the same sense. Yeah, exactly. Off late when I'm starting to watch it.

I'm like, oh, how this looks familiar. I know this and I understand this really well. It's too close to hope. But yeah, I guess I should.

Yeah. Yeah, British comedy is not just complaining about pictures in India. It's actually much more. No, that's not going to compete.

That is a tragedy for the whole day. So have we covered enough ground PGK for you two? Oh, there's one last thing. If I may end on this note, perhaps.

So here's the other thing. Now, after looking at all of this, guess who is now emboldened? The people who are emboldened is the association called. It's I think it's called the IMS.

It's the Indian Association for newspapers. They put out a statement that basically said that we want a greater share of revenue from Google and Facebook. I think the number they put out there is like, we want like 80% of the revenue. It's not entirely clear what revenue, which revenue, what exactly are they looking for?

But yeah, the rules are out for Facebook. This is what they call it, right? Like, right? Like, I believe that doesn't exist.

We want it. Yeah. I think there's a certain form of overton window that has happened with Australia. I think that's the only way to describe it, which means that things that looked completely extreme and fringe and things that you thought were like really crazy stuff.

Slowly are starting to become, I guess this is normal now. So let's all try it. I think that is the real big one for Facebook. If you're Facebook, Google has a real big one.

I don't think the care about giving this money to Australia is probably like jump change. I have a hypothetical question. If Australia didn't play cricket, would we care so much about this? Like, if you didn't care about it, would Facebook actually like, you know, it's like this entire episode.

That is something that is, oh, this makes a lot of sense of when India, towards Australia, when the media goes completely crazy over there. Ah, these other guys. Okay. Now I get it.

So I call it one time long ago, when the western media, American media used to call India the largest and important country in the world. That's what we call it. I think we can call Australia back from Australia. Just an important piece of land in the world.

I think. I was listening to other part of the today's, I'm talking about cricket, about what to do now, because of the Asian century. The Asian century is honest now. India is going to be dominant in like cricket for the next 200 years.

There's nothing we should do in Australia and England. We dominate for two or two. These guys have been a dominant for two years. What can we do?

And then one of the candles, like we can take children and break their fingers and like hammers and all. So then maybe they will do spind bowling and like release planes and orthodox wheels. People are there. We try to use that.

Anyway, on that, just thumping Indian note, hopefully give us some immunity. Okay. That was a lovely and very illuminating discussion. And I think, yeah, it's time to summit up, stay safe and stay unlinked and stay simplified.

Bye. Bye guys.