Facebook's privacy fakeout, WeWork's reckless IPO, and Reagan the welfare queen episode artwork

EPISODE · May 3, 2019 · 36 MIN

Facebook's privacy fakeout, WeWork's reckless IPO, and Reagan the welfare queen

from Pivot · host New York Magazine

Kara and Scott discuss Facebook's new focus on privacy; what comes after the Web 3.0 era; and what Oprah has to say about Scott's new book. Enjoy more of Kara and Scott on Recode Decode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kara and Scott discuss Facebook's new focus on privacy; what comes after the Web 3.0 era; and what Oprah has to say about Scott's new book. Enjoy more of Kara and Scott on Recode Decode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Facebook's privacy fakeout, WeWork's reckless IPO, and Reagan the welfare queen

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This is going to go really well or really poorly. Keep your hands as little as niggas, commercial. I just want you to know I'm investing in the relationship. I drink every night.

And last night I decided to have bourbon instead of clear alcohol, because my voice I've noticed the next day sounds deeper and sexier. And I want this show to be successful. I'm abusing different substances because I want you to make more money. Your dysfunctions have no interest to me.

Oh, you kidding? These are the grooves and the cool things in the persona that it is me. These are the fun, interesting quirks. Don't make fun of my hobbies.

But I'm not inviting you to my axe throwing next week. I'm going to axe throwing in Brooklyn next week. I won't make any lesbian jokes. I will resist the temptation.

Go with the axes. You have a good handle on the axe. Listen to me. You need to talk about actual things.

Let's roll. Let's like this candle. I think we have to start again with Facebook. We talked about Facebook a lot, but they had F8 this week.

Mark took the stage. He talked about the word private or privacy at least 412 times. He tried to make a joke. Nobody laughed at about privacy.

Shit does not do jokes. That's my feeling. And then there comes the news that these FTC things which I wrote about the fine. You and we talked about the fine being bigger.

I wrote about that in the time. Thank you for the idea. I quoted you in it. Life goals.

My other biggest life goal happened this week. Oprah called my new book, The Algebra of Happiness. A wondrously weird collection of short stories. I'm wondrously weird, Kara.

I don't know if that's a compliment from Oprah. I'll take it. Anyway, there was a story talking about there might be a privacy czar at Facebook or groups outside. What do you think about this?

I have myself. I will volunteer. I'll do that job if they want. I will take that job.

I'm putting myself in. I'm doing the mocking j-thing. I'm putting fingers up. As I refer to them, the enhanced interrogation network has found privacy, and I think if they're really serious about privacy, they should hire a very accomplished lawyer at Chief Legal Council who violated the privacy of millions of Americans based on their ethnicity.

Wait, maybe not. Maybe not. Wait, hold on. What do you think the idea that they have these privacy czars within Facebook to watch?

It's basically an ombudsman, right? Is that the concept? Yeah. And they paid someone a billion dollars to deflect in lie to us.

Their name is Sheryl Sandberg. Illusionist trick slash bullshit slash lipstick on cancer slash the mother of all beards. The encryption slash privacy thing is a head fake. Hey, look over here.

This is lipstick on cancer where they're really headed because they've decided they want to create the largest secure encrypted network of 2.6 billion people and where they're headed with is transactions because what's going on is, you know, the marketing, classic marketing funnel, right? They're sort of awareness. Explain it to me. Explain it to those of us who don't think about classic marketing funnels.

Go ahead. Okay. So suppose, so the metaphor for all of marketing and it's a metaphor that's worth probably 10 or 20 trillion dollars is how do you get people to be aware of your product and consider buying it and then they go, okay, I'm going to buy that's intention and then action and then purchase and then loyalty and supposedly the funnel narrows as you go down fewer and fewer people. Everybody knows Mercedes.

Some people want to buy it. A few people actually end up in the showroom and classic marketers have spent a ton of time and we had business school spend a ton of time trying to figure out a way to create a funnel and then move people down it. And the reality is the funnel is actually shifted to more of a wine glass because if you're at Audi.com, you start outfitting or configuring your A6 technology, you can figure that out and you start getting served ads from Cadillac and Lexus. So actually the funnel looks more like a wine glass now because now once we get to consideration and attention, other marketers, technology, different marketers are stepping in.

But anyways, the key is who can actually own the funnel? So if you look at the top, YouTube and Facebook are sort of the gangsters of awareness to do a great job, pretty inexpensively. You move down to intention and who's the Jesus Christ of intention? Oh my gosh, Google, right?

They figure out what you want. You tell them what you want and then it starts nudging you one way or the other. And then the dolly llama of kind of the bottom of the funnel is Amazon because the most expensive shelf space in the world is where you check out because you have to spend time there. Your kids start grabbing chocolate.

It's impulse purchases. So that's the most expensive valuable shelf space in the world and Amazon has created a check out shelf space that is the size of Texas and as a result, Amazon media group is the fastest growing media property in the world. So the key is who can own the entire funnel? And if you look at last week's earnings, it looks as if all of a sudden Amazon might have the entire funnel and that is the top of the funnel with the Marvelous, Mrs.

Misele and Amazon's Echo. They're now the second largest search engine in the world and the largest search engine when people are looking for an actual product, more people do product searches now on Amazon and on Google. And again, they have that check out bottom of the funnel. So they don't have to violate your privacy and doing so by sucking data and getting out of the dirty advertising.

They use the data, but they don't misuse the data, correct? That would be the goal. Well, it's not that they're more moral. It's just that you don't tell people you don't go on Facebook and talk, you don't go on Amazon to talk about your diabetes, whereas you do want to Facebook and then Facebook has individuals who don't care about your privacy.

I mean, Amazon could technically get really, could be scary because they now have a listening device in your house, but to their credit so far really doesn't look like they've abused that data or abused that kind of interface. But now that circling back to Facebook, it could give, let's be honest, I'm really concerned about privacy said no one ever at Facebook ink or no one with any power or that's a great way to basically signal hey, fire me eventually is to start actually generally giving a shit about other people's privacy. Then, but what Facebook's trying to do is everyone thinks Zuckerberg is going after snap noise. He's going after WeChat.

WeChat is probably the most impressive platform in the world right now. That is exactly right. We've talked about this. He wants to be more like that.

It's an easier business too. It gets him in less trouble. So the second brightest mind in business, Mark Zuckerberg has decided, okay, I need to go down the funnel and I'm going to create the largest encrypted network, which is perfect for payments and I'm going to become the Conda Nast turned into Walmart because Hermes and Christian Louis Vuitton will sell and distribute through Instagram because Instagram looks awesome. Amazon does not.

That on Amazon, but they might sell through Instagram stories if all of a sudden they had a commerce and a secure payment platform across everyone in the world. It's the wine glass. There you go. It's a wine glass.

Let me just say that to your next book, The Wine Glass. By the way, speaking of drinking games, I drink every time you say gangster on our show. Gangster? You got to come up with a new one.

Yeah, no, that's an awesome word. That's an interesting question. Whether you can do this, whether you can move to price really is fundamentally changing. Everything Facebook has been into something.

Do you buy it? Do you think these people have a tea? I don't think that's why people use Facebook. I don't think of it that way.

I think they've tried a number of times to do this kind of things, the messaging. I mean, it's big. It's obviously big. What's apps important?

But I think they've never really put their mentality is still an advertising direct, advertising community, that kind of stuff. So I think it's going to be hard to shift focus like this. It's going to be very difficult, especially with the executives they have there. Did you see their earnings?

Did you see Facebook's earnings? They absolutely blew them away. They did. Instagram stories.

Instagram stories now, which in my view, Instagram stories and Amazon media are now the two most powerful marketing platforms in the world. And Instagram stories, I think it was a year on year, a quarter of a group from two million advertisers to three million. And you're right. It's well done.

It's well done. I was just on Instagram, but I was on there. They're really good. These advertisements they have.

Very good. They do amazing job. And by the way, everybody blew away their earnings. Everyone blew away their earnings.

Literally everyone. Twitter, Snap, Amazon, Facebook, except who missed Google, Google, you know, we hate it when monopolies missed their earnings, said the market and took to Google down 7% it's really interesting. I wonder if so everyone immediately said, well, Amazon media group starting to eat into actual Google's business. I wonder if it's also Instagram stories, but it's it's really interesting for the first time it looked to be the most powerful marketing platform in the world is actually starting to take body blows or the growth is slowing down.

I mean, most people would pray for Google's problems, but it's the first time they've missed I think ever on their projections. And it was because it looks like it does a Amazon media group and Facebook Instagram stories are starting. They were blaming the dollar. They had the dollar was their thing.

The dollar with the currency? The currency problem. By the way, quick, quick fact, Google does about 6 billion pounds in business in the United Kingdom. And you know how much you pay in taxes?

Or do you know what the profit they reported? Zero. They reported a profit of 50,000 pounds. Like I tell them we have a profit of 50 that we can't say negative.

Yeah, that tech stuff is going to get into it. There was a good story in the New York Times about nobody pays taxes. Amazon, I think, was at the top of that list. Well, I'm going to go off script here.

But I've been asked by the economist and I like to say that this makes me sound smart. The economist has asked me to write an article on capitalism. So I looked up what is capitalism. Do you have to have a buy line?

They don't like your buy lines in the economy. They don't like to give me a buy line, Cara. Wow. I think I'm going to be literally buried somewhere on the deepest, darkest web.

It's a wonderful publication that I don't read. I buy it so I can walk around airports and people go off to smart. I don't actually do that. I can read it more, but that's another issue.

But I've been thinking a lot about capitalism. Basically, capitalism is supposed to be that the means of production are owned by the private sector and also the spoils are divided up by the private sector. The more you believe in capitalism, the more you think government should get out of everyone's knitting. To a certain extent, we all have government intervention.

Child labor laws are a form of socialism, arguably, but anyways, I'm convinced that mortgage tax deduction and capital gains and social security, which I think is all of these things are nothing but a transfer of wealth from young, middle class, old, rich people. We like to think of them as, oh, we're helping the poor not be poor or buying the American dream or whatever. But you know what else is an incredible tax on young people is complexity. It's complexity favors the people with money and lawyers and tax accounts.

The more complex the tax go gets, the better it is for General Electric, Google, Apple, and the more fucked middle American middle class. We talked about this issue that people in the middle are the ones getting through. So that would make it very interesting for this election, if Democrats can get that through the rich are getting richer and you're not, even no matter who they are, the tech companies. But it is amazing how few taxes these companies pay.

Of course, why wouldn't you not try not to pay taxes? I think I don't agree with Donald Trump on that, but that's what people will do. They're trying to avoid and do all they can if it's complex and they certainly will do. So Reagan had, speaking of taxes, Reagan had this fairly racist, Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan? Remember him? Good hair? Good hair?

Dementia? Good hair? Most of the rate of president history started this long spiral down of fucking middle class. But yeah, good hair.

So let's call him the gipper. Anyway, so this guy basically had this kind of racist and disparaging imagery that he painted of, I think he called them welfare queens and it was clearly racist and he basically said there's a whole group of people out there who are milking the government and taking your tax dollars and gaming the government. You know who the mother of all welfare queens is? Kara?

Ronald Reagan. The mother of all welfare queens. On a cosmic level is Jeff Bezos. And here my logic.

Jeff Bezos ... You're going to go on just for a little bit and we're going to talk about my stories. Go ahead and go ahead. Go ahead.

Tell me about that. I'm intrigued. I cannot look away from this trap. Possible traffic accident.

Go ahead. Someone said that listening to our podcast is like watching NASCAR and then at any point something comes out of my mouth and it could be a fire crash. Yeah, wait, this one I get. I'm watching you spin out of control, but go right ahead.

Okay, so here it is, the wealthiest man in the world has always always been tied up in his stock and he never sell the stock. So he never triggers a capital gain or taxes. So how does it fund his lifestyle? So simple.

for some of between one and a half and two percent. I can borrow against my stock of about two and two point nine percent. That means he can borrow from Jamie Dimon for one and a half to two percent, right? So hardly he never triggers a capital gain.

In exchange for that, there are literally hundreds of billions, one hundred, okay, tens of billions of government subsidies going to Amazon in the form of Haberina HQ here to here or put at your AWS new data center here. He gets effectively 17% of all those transfers of government to Amazon because he owns 17% of the stocks. So I think if you add up the direct transfers from government, if you add up the fact that he doesn't pay really any taxes because he never triggers a capital gain, what we have is the mother of all welfare queens. And that is if you have a $20 trillion economy in quality, $5 trillion tax base and money going in, we're all paying money into that big $5 trillion tax base, right?

You pay taxes. I pay taxes. You pay a lot of taxes. You've been on this tax thing.

You must do just pay a lot of taxes or something. I did. I know I did. I was pretty pissed.

Well, we all write checks. Almost everybody puts money into that pot. And then money goes out $500 or $700 billion in our military or whatever, a trillion dollars to social security. And you know where money also goes out.

It also goes out to Jeff Bezos. The net effect of our economy on the world's wealthiest man is that he is the mother of all welfare queens. All right. I see your point.

I'm not sure I like your imagery, but okay. All right. See how that goes. Hey, by the way, for the first, I got forwarded several several several people forwarded your AI article to me and actually said it was thoughtful.

So I almost read it. But can you tell me why people seem to be marginally impressed with what you wrote? Because I'm a brilliant guy. That's really interesting.

I was in essay written. I've been doing this crazy PowerPoint that I give a lot when people ask me to speak around what I think the next big trends are. And a decade ago, while Mossberg and I wrote an essay saying smartphones would be this is 2007 or nine. So somewhere long time ago, I think it was 2008, maybe we were talking about how smartphones were going to be the next big thing where all the new companies were.

And this is pre Uber, pre all these companies. And so we declared Web 3.0 was about smartphones and mobile phones and cell phones. And it was really prescient that if you go back and actually read it in our original essay, it's quite prescient. We really do call it.

And then, so when I decided to call again, and so I've been putting together this, I just, I change it all the time as PowerPoint about what I think the big trends are among them, AI. And my point is like, there's not one trend now. They're six and they're all intersecting. And they include AI, robotics and automation, changes in self-driving and transportation, end of privacy, continuous partial attention, continuous partial hacking, and political and social unrest.

And so I brought it all together in a 2000 word thesis about where the next era, not Web 3.0, but Web X.0 is coming from. And so I was like, this is why it's going to be super complex. Because there's so many, it's not one thing, like I think the cell phone or the iPhone really changed everything. There's not one thing now, there's 10.

And that's why it's going to be hard. And a lot of them require very sophisticated regulatory schemes. And so that was what my essay was about. And my whole point was that we've got to do something about it.

Because these are not as easy. These are not what's coming next is really massive changes. We're at the cusp of another massive change. That was me.

Okay, there's a couple of questions. Do you think AI is underhype overhype? And when you say massive changes, can you put some more flesh and bones? What do you mean?

I think AI is underhype. I think the changes that are going to be brought through AI as it moves everywhere. It's obviously been here. It's not this is not something new.

But as you move into more sophisticated, and there's general AI in specific AI, there's bad AI, there's all kinds of different things. But I think the companies that really get their arms around the uses of AI are the ones that are going to dominate. And so I think it's underhype. I think it's just the way the internet was underhype.

I think AI is underhype. So okay, so as far as I can tell, the only way that AI impacts my life is if I'm watching season two, episode three of Transparent, Amazon has figured out that I might like episode four, and they start counting it down and they play it without my permission. Other than that, that too. Oh, everything.

Lots of everything. It will do everything. It will anticipate everything. It will be able, you know, just even just in, as you move to self-driving, for example, you need a massive optimization system to understand how cars move around.

And it's such a complex or where they're going to move or what they're going to do. And you just need, you need so much data to understand this. And I think the issues I was talking about is that what data goes in here, where do you get the data? Is it dirty data?

Is it, you know, it's just, the amount of data that's going to be able to be part of the system is really quite breathtaking. And so the question is, who can who can figure this out for all kinds of things? And not just anticipatory things like that, which is part of it, but it's chatbots. It's every, it's every single thing.

And so that's, it's going to be like the internet. I guess I don't know how to explain the internet. It's like someone hyping the blockchain right now. It's going to be everything.

I'm not hyping the blockchain. The blockchain's going to be important. I didn't talk about the blockchain. I don't quite understand the internet.

So I just, I just want to just sort of purposes of discussion here. Autonomous driving, I think is a little bit, or what do you think the ultimate for? Everyone's talking about AI is Latin for firing cashiers and Amazon opens their ghost doors and uses AI so you can walk out and not have a cashier. And I think most retailers have decided it's cheaper to hire someone at 10 bucks an hour than to implement AI.

Right now, okay. Autonomous driving. I think autonomous driving is incredibly overhyped technology, even though I mentioned several dozen times in the Uber almost. You would be the person who would be sitting there on your, and you're like, cart with the horse saying these cars.

I don't get them. Who am I going to speak to if I don't have an Uber driver? Who the hell is going to talk to me? You're not going to have an Uber driver eventually.

You are not you. Maybe not you. You'll probably be dead. So then what's next?

When you say Web X point out, what is next? Look at this beyond meets just one public, right? This is interesting. This is just, I didn't even write about this, but I was beyond me just going public today or something like that.

This is the plant-based meat or whatever. And you know, there's a lot of players and that's include the meat, the meat people were involved in beyond me. They sold to do their own version of it. And obviously, there's some possible foods and all kinds of things.

I think that's a really interesting area. I think, you know, it's a lot about execution and marketing and getting people to change habits. But I think that's super interesting. Agtech.

Agtech, I think it's interesting. See, I, by the way, I hate that name. It's terrible branding. I do not want to go beyond me.

If we get to the meat station, I'm getting off and staying there. I could eat meat three times a day. By the way, best marketing campaign ever, Sible Shepherd, a vegetarian, James Garner who'd had a triple bypass, talking to the spokesperson for the National Pork Association in the 80s and best tagline ever, the other white meat. Oh, I love that.

I love that. That's how I describe business school. They all have us come to catch our classes to the snotty little kids who are paying a lot of money. And I just get up there and I say, my name's Scott Galloway.

My class is brand strategy, better known as the other white meat. You have to like the milk one better, the milk. What was that? With the milk mustache.

Oh, yeah. Got milk. Yeah, yeah. Now that was cute, too.

That was brilliant. No, that was brilliant. The meat one. There's never a good meat strategy.

Anyway, I think those are interesting. I think I started talking about trends that are coming up and that we, this is a big, lots of big, important changes, something that was what it was about. Essentially, that's what it was about. Well, congratulations on that.

Thank you. It was a relaunch of recode and box together was something so I decided to pontificate for a while. On the recode site, rather than your time site, I'm going back on tomorrow to pontificate on your time site. Recode, New York Times, tomato, tomato, multi-brand strategy.

That's what I am, multi-brand strategy. Hold on. Speaking of multi-brand, I just have a bonafit. You and I, you both used to be on CNBC every week.

They've literally stopped calling me. I have been, I have been verbaten from CNBC. So by the way, CNBC, in my view now, is catheter television. Literally look at the ads.

Okay. Restless Lake syndrome. Oh, you want to do this conversation. If you're watching CNBC, it means one thing.

It means your life fucking sucks. Literally get your life alert and watch another financial new station. Support for the show comes from O2. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

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That's O-D-O-O dot com. Support for the show comes from O2. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing O2.

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It's got a new calm down. I'm not going to do it. No, I have calm down, by the way. I think that was it.

Hold on. I think that. Don't rush me. Love me.

Don't judge me. Anyways, listen, so that was a great ad. But you know what would be a better ad is if we showed an old man named Chuck spending time with his grandkids and tried to defraud seniors into believing that in fact we had a trading system and we could run an ad called Trade Like Chuck or it's always called. Oh wait, no, that's CMBC defraud seniors.

Trade Like Chuck everybody. That's how you score time for your grandkids. And fails right now. You're a fail.

But let me just start by saying I saw that Disney Avengers opening weekend. I saw it. Fantastic movie. Fantastic.

Great. Great. I'm going to see it tomorrow with my voice. Perfect.

Perfect. Perfect. Perfection is a movie exactly what I wanted. Very long.

Perfection. Amazing. Even though someone stole the bag that was sitting next to my chair this weekend when I was watching. You're shitting me.

No kidding. I had a sheet in it. I bought a bottom sheet and it was gone, gone, gone. Wow.

I'm sorry to hear that. Fine. The movie was fantastic. It was fantastic.

So what do you think about that? Disney seems to someone who's just telling me, I'm going to Los Angeles tonight, but someone was just telling me Disney owns everything now. It feels like they're sort of on all cylinders. They've got that.

They've got all kinds of things going on. What do you think? So look, Disney is, you know, that's kind of revenge, revenge of the old school. I think Walmart and Disney are kind of the two, I would argue the only two legacy firms that are landing counter punches on these tech monopolies.

And I think Bob Iger is one of the few people who can pull it off that has the assets and the credibility. So I'm rooting for Disney. I think Disney's amazing. What do you think?

I think they're great. I think he said, I have a lot of admiration for him. And I think the movie was so well done and so beautifully marketed. And just everything was flawless.

It was flawless. I was thinking, what a flawless everything that they did. And you know, the numbers of people at the movie theater was astonishing. Like I could, I had to go like a weird time.

It was really amazing. And my fail this week is this Amazon ring hiring, doing crime reporting from the photos from the. What was that same one? It's a ring, which I have in my house, actually, before they got bought by Amazon, I'm not sure what to do with them right now.

They, you know, they can, they take pictures of things and a lot, they have like a blog that I actually look at. It's like hard not to look about people doing awful things like taking packages. It's mostly people taking packages, Amazon packages, which is kind of funny, not ironic. And now they're trying to make stories out of some of these things that are on the ring that get photographed.

So it's instead of just like, you know, those cop shows where it's from the thing that's on the cops shoulder. Now this is what's coming out of your ring, I guess. I don't, I'm not really clear. I think it's just, it's going to go wrong.

It's going to go wrong. Scott, that's my fail. What about you? Okay, so a lot of wins here.

But first I look, the earnings from every company to Google were just unbelievable. So a ton of wins in the earnings season. Also, and I'm starting to talk about this. I thought Biden's announcement was actually pretty well done.

And it's, I think it's another interesting lesson in marketing and choosing the medium. So live events are a medium, but the riskier Kamala Harris's live event was a huge win. There was an electricity there. She just nailed it.

And, and she's attractive and looks good in direct sunlight. And so does Cory Booker. And he chose a live event, but it didn't work because people didn't show up and it kind of fell flat. That's a problem.

Yeah, it is. But Senator Biden was smart. He said, okay, I'm 76. You know, under natural light, I look like an underwater plan.

I look like I just shouldn't be alive. And by the way, I'm pretty sure that's a hate crime. He's doing pretty good. Second, second one today.

But he did a good job. Come on. He's like couldn't get do better. He did a, he did a really good.

Well, you know the thing is I'm convinced Joe Biden has a vision for the country. But the real question is, does he have night vision? Okay. I don't know.

But I gotta tell your friend, Vaido is fading fast. He could, he was higher. I heard that he had like things that couldn't fill up. My new heroes in the race.

So he announced this morning, my hero announced, Michael Bennett, Senator Michael Bennett, two objectives to restore income ability to the middle class and also to restore integrity to our government. This guy, I am such a huge fan of this guy. Senator Michael Bennett, fully recovered from prostate surgery or prostate cancer surgery, says my come more deliberate. This guy is thoughtful, not afraid to stand up to the far left.

I just, I'm going all in on this guy. I love Vaido. I'll have him as a lover. I'll have him as a lover.

But I am marrying Senator. You know, it's interesting. Pete Buttigieg is on the cover of Time Magazine with his partner, Jason, who I love on Twitter. It's really wonderful.

That was interesting. I still am a Kamala fan. I gotta say, I'm no Pete's the guy who shows up to a party 30 minutes early with ice, right? He's just like, he's the guy said, I'm here to help.

I'm here to help. They're all doing pretty good. They're all doing pretty good. All the front lines are all doing a lot of it.

I think they're all doing good. They're all doing good. They're good choices. There's a lot of good choices.

Let me just say, I won't feel bad about almost any of them. I have to say. I hope so. We'll see.

I mean, Trump really aimed at Biden now. Boy, did he go after him. And then, of course, he'll go after him. Yeah, all that does is legitimize Biden.

That's a gift. That's a slow fastball. Is there such a thing as a soft fastball? Anyways, that's a, you know, that's, that's a gift to Biden, because what he does is legitimizes him and cements him as a front runner.

All of Trump's advisors, who he doesn't listen to, are like, Oh, God, don't don't say ignore. Yeah, they did. That's like Jared doesn't like it. Jared.

Yeah, Jared, you know, he's a student of mine. I'm speaking of advisors. I think Bill Barr was a failed this week. Who was it?

Oh my God, on a cosmic level. I think he's going to, I think he's going to, how can I even more just went down? How can I have a lead? What do you think of whatever you think of his father?

See, this guy's led an honorable life of public service and impressive guy. How can I really fuck up my reputation just before I die? I mean, literally, it's like, how can I exit on? How can I leave the room and not only say I'm a whore, but I'm a cheap whore?

Oh, wait. Okay. I mean, this guy literally to what food in you. All right.

I'm moving you to predictions. We got to wrap up. I'm having Tristan Harris soon to talk about. Tristan.

Tristan. Oh my God. That guy's a gangster. Big brain, big brain and very handsome.

His thing is humans, the dehumanizing of humans, whatever. Yeah, how we're basically all biomechanically addicting. He's a thoughtful guy. I know, so I'm going to talk to him in this very room, my man.

Tristan, Tristan. Okay, so a few things. I think Spotify is getting into acquisition territory. There's no one company.

There's no Monopoly, like every other medium in music. There's Apple with a shitty service growing faster than Spotify because they're a Monopoly on the rails, Amazon music, another part of the oligopoly crowd. And then there's Spotify, which has the best service out there, mostly because they're willing to lose money. And Spotify went out at 150.

It's now, I think about 130 or 130. I think they're getting to acquisition prices. And also the other company, I think they could actually- Being bought, you mean. Yeah, being bought, being acquired.

And then the other company that I think there's a chance might get acquired before they go out is Slack. And then- People have tried. People have tried. People have tried.

Google has tried. Yes. Microsoft made a really big push. Push.

Yeah. And then, and by far, and I've been, I don't know if I've been wrong or right on this, the most over-value private company in the world filed there for their IPO. We work. 100% care.

We work. Let's take Regess. It's basically Regess. It's basically taking a floor in a building, Regess temporary office and put in a cool bar and some craft beer and pretend we're an internet company.

And it's just, it's supposed to be going out at an evaluation or trying to go out at an evaluation of $45 billion. I mean, this literally is the pets.com of this era. All right. Oh.

If this is $5 million. Which one? That was a good one. Okay.

And what do you think's the answer out of the stock prediction? Well, I don't know if it's going to get out. I don't know what the price it gets out at. But if you do the math here, it looks as if the floors that we work, if it gets out of the storytelling evaluation, the floors that we work leases are technically more valuable than the entire building that leases in that floor.

This thing just makes no sense. I mean, at least it makes Lyft look like a great business. It's incredible that you want to talk about entering into consensual hallucination with the marketplace. By the way, they're founder, Adam Newman.

I mean, it's this thing, this valuation is burgeoning on fraudulent, but I'm coming back to my next life that's this guy. Have you met this guy? I do know him. Oh my God.

He's so thoughtful and nice, and he looks like that Argentinian polo player, Nacho. That everybody loves. I'm like, Jesus Christ. I was asked to come interview him.

You look great, but your business is nearly fraudulent. It doesn't matter. Let me just break it down. Okay.

He's whether he's dreaming or 10 billion or dreaming worth a billion. That's still fucking dreamy, right? That's capital D, dreamy. It was next life.

I'm coming back as I can. But his company is a joke. That is ridiculous. Ridiculous.

Ridiculous. Ridiculous. All right, then Scott, it's time to go. What else do you have on tap for this week?

You always ask me that. I'm going to say I'm getting tomorrow night because you love it and I'm taking my kids. I pick. I got the kids this week.

I'm excited about that. I got to be I get to be I get to be solo down this week. I'm kind of excited about that. Bottom of my eight year old is not I'm having trouble connecting with my eight year old.

How do I connect with them? You just don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

That's what I say. I'm going to be on film are tomorrow night. I'm going to be on film are time. I'm going to film are.

Yeah, fucking it. That's it. I'm going on strike. I am going on strike.

I'm going to see out of the next week. And then I'm going to go to the self conference in Las Vegas where that's a scare moochies situation. I've had it. I've literally had it.

I'm you know, I'm Stephanie real is hosting my book signing at Stern. That's the only thing I have that's even in the same in the same realm. She's fantastic. She's wonderful.

She's wonderful. I can get invited to your book party. Well, you know what? We have a list and it's 400 people and you came in at 403.

So you just missed the cut. I'm having difficulty right now. You just missed the cut. I wouldn't have come anyway.

That pisses me off. I would be so awesome on the line. Is it because I'm unattractive? Is he looks us?

Is he looks us? Whatever. In any case, Rebecca Sinanis produces this show in his shot. Kerwa is executive producer.

Thanks also to Eric Johnson. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back next week with more of a breakdown of all things tech and business. If you like what you heard, please subscribe, rate and review Pivot on Apple Podcasts.

The Founder Hub Sonia & Alana The Founder Hub Podcast goes behind the scenes of founders and their start up journeys, sharing their little gold nuggets of their successes, and how to pivot around adversity, keeping it real and leaving no stone unturned.We are passionate about engaging and creating. We love people, and connecting like-minded people! We thrive off elevating one along their journey and exploring different avenues to success. We are excited to bring you the best of our amazing guests who will span across a range of industries & businesses from services & product based.Starting a business can be a lonely road but it doesn’t have to be, join us weekly to get your juices flowing. The Legacy Lounge Live – Episode 10: Multiple Streams of Income Tasha Rodriguez In this episode of The Legacy Lounge Live, we dive into real, practical ways to create additional income—no degree required. This conversation is rooted in strategy, discipline, and building income that works for you, not the other way around.Featuring a powerhouse panel across real estate, finance, life insurance, notary services, and entrepreneurship, we break down how everyday people can tap into opportunities and turn skills into income streams.From notary businesses and flood adjusting to real estate investing, life insurance, car rentals, Airbnb, and even crypto—this episode gives you a clear, honest look at what’s possible and how to get started the right way.Whether you’re trying to supplement your income, pivot careers, or build long-term wealth, this episode is about moving with intention and building something that lasts.One stream covers bills. Multiple streams build legacy. Breaking Into Cybersecurity Christophe Foulon, Renee Small It’s really a conversation about what they did before, why did they pivot in cyber, what was the process they went through Breaking Into Cybersecurity, how do you keep up, and advice/tips/tricks along the way.About Breaking Into Cybersecurity: This series was created by Renee Small &  Christophe Foulon to share stories of how the most recent cybersecurity professionals are breaking into the industry. Our special editions are us talking to experts in their fields and cyber gurus who share their experiences of helping others break-in.Check out our new book, Develop Your Cybersecurity Career Path: How to Break into Cybersecurity at Any Level: https://amzn.to/3443AUI About the hosts:   Renee Small is the CEO of Cyber Human Capital, one of the leading human resources business partners in the field of cybersecurity, and author of the Amazon #1 best-selling book, Magnetic Hiring: Your Company's  Secret Weapon to Attracting Top Cyber Security Talent. She is committed to helping leaders clos JimJim's Reinvention Revolution Podcast JimJim Explore the process of reinvention in the digital age as it relates to career, creativity and technology impact on daily life. Interviews with professionals, entrepreneurs, and creatives who have re-imagined success and are making a pivot. Hear insights about their inspiration, turning point and how the new digital world has helped or hurt them. Subscribe for weekly interviews about Reinvention, Creative Inspiration, Breaking Through, Digital Landscape, Entrepreneurship.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long is this episode of Pivot?

This episode is 36 minutes long.

When was this Pivot episode published?

This episode was published on May 3, 2019.

What is this episode about?

Kara and Scott discuss Facebook's new focus on privacy; what comes after the Web 3.0 era; and what Oprah has to say about Scott's new book. Enjoy more of Kara and Scott on Recode Decode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast...

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