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I'm a billionaire with an insatiable thirst for attention and approval. And I'm also Elon Musk. Cara made me say that. No, I'm teasing.
We don't think you're Elon Musk. We don't think nobody thinks anybody else is Elon Musk. What the fuck you said? Independent minded voters should vote Republican.
And by the way, I take that to mean that if you live in Florida or Texas, you should vote for state senators that are Democratic, given that they're under primarily Republican control. Is that what he meant? Is that what he said? What he was getting at?
No. No. No. No.
He often says things that are opposite to the things he says. I don't know if you noticed that. Like opposite to things he says. So he says things like comedy is now legal on Twitter.
And apparently it's not. Yeah, I've heard. I don't know if you've heard, but he has said that your account will be suspended if you impersonate somebody without saying it's a parody. Yeah.
He's suspended someone who said that. But go ahead. What if you parody an impersonator? What if you?
Yeah. He's a little bit of a fan of the story. But he had a fake nose and glasses with he be suspended. And by the way, parody is one of the key components of, quote, unquote, free speech.
Yeah, I do. Yeah. So I don't. I'm not entirely.
I'm going to say this is a little inconsistent. What's going on? Yes. Yes.
We'll get into all that Scott. But first, how was your birthday? I hate my birthday, but it was kind of, I think it was symbolic of how old I'm getting. I was sorry for myself.
I was coming back from LA. I did an event in Denver and I was at the airport and it was about three or four. And I hadn't heard from anybody. Yeah.
My sons hadn't called me. I usually hear from my dad and my sister. I was starting to feel sorry for myself. And I put out a tweet looking for cheap likes saying, you know, it's my birthday.
That's my people. People who love me. I love, you know, easy way to get three or four thousand likes. And then somebody on Twitter goes, your birthday is tomorrow, Scott.
Oh, dear. I got my birthday wrong. So I'm now so old that I don't remember when my actual birthday is. Anyway, so that was my birthday.
So while you're away, we had Kai Ristel, guest host. He has very nice hair and a buttery voice. He's a buttery voice. I think he might rival George Hahn in terms of sexy voice.
Yeah. He's so smart, too. He's so smart. Yeah.
It was one of my favorite. It was one of my favorite. He was very good. He's smart.
Yeah. He was good. And he was a little bit of naughty. He's usually he's much more straightforward, but he had some things to say, which was great.
I thought that's he's a guy's a star. I mean, he's perfectly fitting. NPR continues to find incredibly talented people in the production values there. I just I love Kai.
I think he's a good guy. He was great. Well, thank you, Kai, for doing that. And now Scott is back because I have lots of things to talk about.
We'll talk about layoffs across big tech. Also, we'll get into the shakeup on cable news and we'll speak with Matt Stoller about antitrust and the Albertson steel. But first, come on. What are we going to talk about?
Let's go straight to our big story. Elon Musk has commanded that shall have no funnier tweets before me over the weekend. Elon Musk issued a new rule via tweet. He said going forward any Twitter handles and gauging impersonation without clearly specifying parity will be permanently suspended because everyone knows that the best comedy has clearly labeled disclaimers.
The move seems to be in clear response to some tongue and cheek Elon impersonators over the weekend, which are all very funny and obvious. Sarah Silverman, Kathy Griffin and cartoonist Jeff jock all had their Twitter accounts locked or suspended after changing their names to Elon Musk and tweeting out jokes, mostly voting jokes. Those are all verified accounts. By the way, which is why the joke works, one person who did label himself a parody also got suspended.
So I don't know where we are. Valerie Birkenelli was one of the first celebs to do this. But Jeff jock probably said it best. He tweeted as Elon, I sport free speech unless you're making fun of me, which is illegal.
Peter Brannan said that Elon's announcement had strong substitute teacher vibe, who's lost control of the class and all the kids smell blood in the water vibes. Dave Lee said so far, every Musk comment policy has been directly related to his own personal experience on Twitter and little else. So he also was someone tweeted that he was like Joe Pesci in home alone because getting hit by pain cans. How should he have handled this?
Just left it off Scott. He's using all your ideas right now at Twitter, by the way. How should he have handled this? Well, my friend, I was talking about something that really struck me and he's basically built a career around this kind of singular notion of that it's not what you do.
It's how you do it. And if you were to step back and say, all right, I'm going to buy a media platform. I believe it hasn't been run well. I'm going to come up with a bunch of new ideas.
I'm going to make difficult decisions right away. I think you could argue that a lot of these decisions in broad brush are justifiable and maybe even good decisions. But when you show up with an appliance or show up with a sink and you're about to lay off half the workforce, I don't think that's the time for humor. And one of the things I like about Elon is he has a sense of humor.
I think it's a funny guy. But you don't do that 72 hours before laying off half the staff. And then when you lay off half the staff, you don't realize that you've laid off some critical mission critical people and then call them and ask them to come back. You don't try to fire people for cause when there is no cause.
When you try to clean up the platform and you say, all right, I want to move to subscription, which is the right thing to do. Which you said for years, I'm just giving credit. But you don't move to shadow banning with blue check because the first thing you do when you look at subscription is you say, who's getting the most surplus value here? Now, if Kylie Jenner is getting a bunch of money for a tweet, that's value move in on that.
But the blue check is really value for the network and the other users. So that's not surplus value there. All that's doing is shadow banning. In addition, economically it's a dumb move because it would only generate about $40 million a year in exchange for all this controversy.
In addition to Cara, these guys, I don't think this is just true of Elon. I've been thinking about the power recently. These guys look out the window and they see themselves. And that is he's running this like a startup and he's pivoting it around like a zodiac.
This thing's a tanker and you have to be more thoughtful about decisions. And he's not being thoughtful about decisions. And also bringing in outsiders is a really good idea for fresh ideas. But when you bring in people who are either right wing or kind of represent the worst of Twitter or your kiss up buddies, people who suck up too almost.
So I think actually new ideas quite frankly layoffs, a jolt and adrenaline jolt to the heart making decisions quickly. I think these are all the right things to do. I mean, it's always doing it. It's a stripe CEO laid off a lot of people.
They were going for an IPO been very successful. Had a layoff, a lot of people. He had a lovely note. It wasn't particularly like, you know, woke or anything else.
It just was classy. He just was here. He was like, you know, I'm not doing it. Here's why I'm doing it.
Never kicked people in the way out. Never insulted them. Never said everything they do sucks and then borrowed their ideas. You know, they left him in the cabinet and he's using the reason why they have to possibly go back to people is as many people who work there said is he's launching things we may after and he laid us off and he's pretending it's his idea.
Of course, now he's attacking Mastodon. It's all 12 year old boy humor, but not a very nice 12 year old boy, you know, particularly badly raised 12 year old boy. Yeah. And taking over a company that you're going to get the wheel of this company, but they still have their hands on the wheel.
Yeah. I mean, did you hear what happened at the new fronts? Yes. Explain what they are.
Yeah. Well, they like the up fronts. What they used to do for TV where advertisers say in their media planners and agency say, we want some surety some certainty of media planning. We want the best bots.
We want to be guaranteed placement and we want to we want our marketing spent to foot to our product launch strategies. So they say upfront, all right, NBC, Vox, Twitter, we'll guarantee it. We're a Unilever of PNG. We'll guarantee you we'll buy $50 million where the media you guarantee is the best placement and we can all better plan stuff and we're not just shooting from the hip every week trying to figure out where to place our ads.
Sure. And it's great for these businesses because they get to book revenue right up front and they get to see what the we are going to look like. Later on average at the new fronts garnered about 20% of its annual revenue from upfront commitments from advertisers ranging from PNG to G.M. to Unilever.
Yeah. At this year's new fronts, a group of advertisers got together and said, we need to ask Twitter executives, what is going to be the deal with content moderation? And they asked these questions and the people on stage, A, likely didn't know, but B weren't in a hurry to carry Elon's water as Elon had been ship hosting them. And they said, very honestly, we don't know.
And you know what happened? That 900 million shrunk to zero. And so he shows up 20% down. And these are these are self-inflicted injuries.
These are unforced errors. And now he's at a company that's losing $4 million a day. Plus. Allegedly.
That's what he says. Honestly, who knows? How have the revenues not been cut in half right now? How have they not?
Well, he's got costs in half, right? I suppose. Or some costs. And he has.
And he has another billion, billion, billion, three, and interest payments he's got to come with. He has cut them in half yet. He's got to pay severance, et cetera. But go ahead.
So it's not again. It's not. I think most of them, you could make a strong argument for everything. He's done.
It's how he's done it. No, I wouldn't make a strong one for everything. He's done. There's a lot of things that Twitter staff made and pulling out of the cabinet, the good things and not giving credit.
Exactly. How is it? That's how. Some of them I agree with.
Let me get first, too. Well, let's raise the question. The blue check. I know you're still going to pay for it.
You're still going to fork over $8. And let me just say I am so Karraswisher. I am so Karraswisher. Please don't.
Please don't. Please do not. It's just. You know.
Interestingly, I sort of pushed back on another idiotic David Sacks thing where he was going. He was trying to act. The guy who had one of the most expensive forties birthday parties in Silicon Valley history where you dressed up like Louis XIV, let them be cake kind of party, is telling us about elites and, that's my favorite part, private planes and multi-million dollar party person is telling us about elites. But it's not a status symbol to people, I never thought it as a status symbol, I don't care if they wanted to verify everyone, I always push that, that idea that everyone should be verified, that was a problem on Twitter, they can sell it to anyone, but that's what it is, it's a sale.
And it's not verified, and I hate the word verified when it's not, it's just a credit card swipe, which is fine. Many people do that. Amazon, you know, do they know who I am? Through my purchases, I guess, I suppose they know who I am, but I don't pay them for that, I don't pay them for the privilege, I just buy stuff, I don't have to pay them for prime, because I'm getting something, I'm trying to think, I pay for what I get.
And so what does it signify, because one of the arguments is an insurance safety for the program and bots, et cetera, but why should I have to pay for that? I don't know. I think you're right on this one, and that is, I get more value from your blue check than you do, you get some, you get, you get, you get, and well, hold on, hold on, hold on. It does say something.
I want to pay for it, not, but go ahead. It may not be enough for you to pay for it, but it does, there is a certain credibility when you have the blue check. It is a badge, it is a self-expressive benefit or a prestigious badge. Having said that, the majority of the value is garnered by Twitter and others who get to say, if I want to know what Kara Swisher thinks about Net as layoffs, and I do a search for her, when I see Kara Swisher blue check, I know this is her.
So it's valued at the company, it's veracity around the network. It's the wrong place to start, in addition, if he just got 10% of their 230 million users who get the most value, and they started extracting some of the additional surplus economic value, they could get a couple billion dollars, but instead he's opened a can of shit storm for an incremental $40 million. These decisions are not well thought out. You know, it literally spent all their communications time yelling at their most active users, you know, yelling, and maybe they want us off the platform, whatever, I'll use it as much as I want, and when I feel like it.
And by the way, let me just say very clearly, I'm willing to pay for value, absolutely, I had Twitter blue, I stopped using Twitter blue, wasn't valuable, that's all. And if it had been, I signed right up, right away, because I said, I'll try it. You know, if they wanted me to pay for editing, I don't think I'd pay for editing at this time, because every other service lets you edit, except for Twitter. So to me, they should just give it to you, right?
It's table stakes right now in Facebook, Instagram. You can edit all those things for years now. So I'm not gonna pay for that. I'm just trying, what would I pay for at longer videos?
Not really, longer posts, no. I mean, I'll pay for what's valuable over time. Like if they wanted me to buy articles, I would do that. I don't wanna give them my credit card at this time.
Honestly, I don't trust them from a date. The original sin of the internet, of the web. And Marc Andreessen, who has credit said this, was they didn't build in robust functionality around micro payments. So as a result, largely fashioned by business genius, Cheryl Sandberg will give her this.
They went to an ad model. And the algorithm said, okay, the only way we can serve more Nissan ads is to addict people and enrage them. If they'd gone to micro payments, brute, and said, okay, this is an interesting article from Matt Levine. I got a lot from this.
I'm gonna give him five cents, 10 cents, 50 cents. And Twitter can keep two or whatever. And you create an ecosystem around payments similar to the App Store. It would have created an entirely different feel and vibe.
And creators could have made money. Simon Holland, who has, I just love this guy. It's an never-ending stream of dad jokes. He said something the extent of like, I'm at the age of daylight saving time is a traumatic experience.
But he said it much more eloquently. I would give him five, 10 cents a buck all the time. Mike Berbeglia, I think of him as a genius. I think a genius comic who's starting, he's got a Broadway show coming out this week.
I love every time he makes me smile or laugh to give him a buck. I would just like that. Do you want to know something? What's that?
People send me money all the time on Venmo, because of my chance. They send me to a dollar or $2. I got $20 the other day. I collected all and I'm gonna give it to charity.
But sure, yeah, if you want to tip me, go ahead. That's fine. Do you know what they said, me? This is true.
You know what they said? I guess what I got. I got a copa. I guess a copa, I get edibles.
Yeah, yeah. I get booze and drugs. I am very entertaining on Twitter. I'm a good performer.
I'm good. It's like, they didn't just drive a clown car into a Goldman. They drove it out of the gold night now. They're running around and they're not selling rich people.
They're not selling elites when they are literally the most elite people, the definition of elite. It's the most interesting thing that goes wrong when you become elite. Let me tell you the most depressing thing I got today. So I wrote this long thing about it was about David Sachs, and I was like, don't lecture me, you elite Joe.
Don't do it. I don't mean to be lectured about anything about you. I didn't even want this thing. And I said, everyone who knows him doesn't like him, and they never say it out loud.
I've never met him. You know him. I've interviewed him. He's on the podcast with Chama.
You'll get a good old to go listen to that because you look, you might like, he's funny. Jason is an obnoxious person and is rude, terribly rude to you and picked up mixed place with you all the time. I don't know why. This guy is really a piece of work.
This guy. I've stuck with me. I got it. All right.
And someone wrote me and I'm going to say who it is. Every text friend group I'm in is cheering. Finally, someone fucking brave enough, respect enough to say it. So thank you.
You know what? You all should say it because you think it and you talk behind his back about people like him. There's, Silicon Valley is rife with these second tier, third tier people who hang on to the powerful people who sit around and lecture people. They're frequently wrong.
They're never in doubt. They had one or two big hits, usually along for the ride or got lucky. And they lorded over people and they're assholes. There's plenty of nice people.
Patrick Collison, Mark Cuban is nice. Like there's dozens of really nice people who have done much more successfully. I wish you all would say what you think. I think Brian Chesky needs to be appointed rabbi for all these guys.
I do too. Well, you know what? They have to hang out with Brian for an hour every week. But isn't David Snacks the guy that wrote the book with Peter Thiel and in the book?
And I want to be clear. I think they apologize for this. He apologized to me. I wrote that story.
I wrote the story of the apology. Come on. Where they referred to rape as delayed regret. I'm sorry, belated regret.
That is a peek into the mind. An editor and a publisher both saw that term and said, are you sure? This wasn't a tweet. And also, I can't stand these individuals the moment people want to have a conversation with them and push back.
They claim they're being censored or that somehow we're at least. A meat or whatever. They're so not smart. I'm sorry, in general.
Certain things are smarter. He's a good operator, isn't it? Didn't he start a couple of good companies? He started Yammer and sold it.
It was not a very good service. But Microsoft was desperate at the time to get into the business and bought it for a lot of money. Then he went, he was at Zenefits. And it crashed.
And he tried to revive it. I don't think it's the world on fire kind of thing. He made some good investments. He actually was an investor near V&B, I believe.
And there's a lot of people. All these people that carried along, hey, come into this deal, come into that deal. But he's not certainly not outstanding compared to so many outstanding entrepreneurs that I have met and who are lovely, outstanding and lovely. And so far, but there's just a red.
There's so many people like him in Silicon Valley. It's crazy. Nonetheless, fine. He did well.
Great. I don't know. This goes to Elon. Yeah.
Are these the right people to bring in to advise you on how to make Twitter better? Thoughts. They're not doing the idea. Go to their Twitter feeds and say, is this what we want more of?
Yeah. It's defensive. It's conspiracy minded. It is a total lack of self-awareness.
It is the mother of all conflation of luck with talent. These individuals don't even nod their head to America or how fortunate they are or to the role other people have played in their success. And anyone who questions the value of their portfolio or their investments warrants incessant attack. Let's not waste time on these people.
Well, sorry. We've wasted a lot of time. Sorry. Mommy's triggered.
Anyway, I want to know, is there a case you made that impersonators with blue checks are actually breaking the rules? That was one of their. He broke the rule. Like, of course, they love breaking the rules until someone else doesn't.
Then they try to grab on anything. That's happened. People have lost their blue checks. But I think you should suspend them and then tell them to cut it out.
But so now Kathy Griffin is tweeting from the count of her late mother, which probably isn't ideal. But whatever. She can do whatever she wants. I don't really care.
How it freaks with people out of her mother and a while. I think her mother. She was. And notice they didn't come down in Valley, Bertinelli, who kind of started this because she's adorable.
And nobody wants to mess with Valley, Bertinelli. It's easy to dunk on to Kathy Griffin. But what do you think about that? Hey, look, I just think everything.
I just think they're going about it all wrong. I think this is a total. There's something about the universe. I'm not thinking about it.
I'm going to write about it this week. On a very cosmic level, the universe has decided that diversity is the key. That any species, human ecosystem that gets too powerful organization ultimately hits a ceiling. The ceiling has been lifted.
People can now aggregate a quarter of a trillion dollars. But at some point, the universe in the form of creating really bad instincts and judgment says no one organism, company, or person should ever get too powerful. I think he's hit that point. I just can't imagine.
How is this helping Tesla when he starts giving political recommendations on Twitter after just taking control of it the day before the midterms? I mean, it's just surrounding himself with this right wing vile and being very aggressive and these shoot from the hip dumb decisions. By the way, I don't think you guys don't have the blue check thing. I don't think it's going to happen.
They're already walking it back. They're already saying. No, he keeps going $8 to people. Catherine Gervan come on up.
She pays $8. This whole $8 thing. Have you received any official word about the change? I haven't.
I haven't. But I mean, again, I thought my birthday was the wrong day. I made this. Yeah, that's true.
I don't think I've seen it. It's fraught with all sorts of errors and with little upside. Let's introduce a ton of risk with very little upside. I would not give him your credit card.
I also see some charges at Zuni, very soon in San Francisco. Big charges. That restaurant? That's a name for the past.
I went there for brunch in 1997. It's still there, my friend. It's the best. Oh, no.
Trust me. My credit card has shown up on much worse places. OK. I like my favorite restaurant.
One of the favorite restaurants is really wonderful. For a special night out with your loved one, I'll take you there, Scott. You always are promising that stuff. I'm going to use David's saxes credit card that I stole.
No, I didn't steal his credit card. That's a parody. That's a joke. That's a parody.
Just don't impersonate him. Yeah, no, that's not the guy I pick. Anyway, so where does this go? Let's be helpful.
Where does this go from here? I mean, you're asking what he should do? Yeah, give me what he should do immediately is acknowledge. He's like, you know, I'm used to being in control.
I have startups. I just want to apologize for my actions over today. And some of these antics, I've immediately appointed name like, I don't know, Meg Whitman, or somebody who has seen us a talented, measured, thoughtful executive. Yes, she's all right.
Go ahead. Well, I don't know if it's Meg. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
And I put together an advisory account. I put together a board of directors. He's saying his tweet for independent-minded voters he's basically saying, excess control is a bad thing. I agree with him.
So boss put together a board of directors of people who can help you. Yeah. It's hard to read the label from inside of the bottle. And he's got this bottle that Ollie sees as reflections of himself.
Yeah. And so I think you can do that. Move to a subscription model based on surplus value. Immediately roll back the shadow banning the blue check thing.
There's a lot to be. The payments idea is a really good one. Oh, it's not fresh anew. The bringing back vine is a good one.
They got a lot of the people who built it are like, this is real old code, but go ahead. But the idea of short form video, I mean, I like their idea of experimenting and getting things going. Get rid of the right wing billionaire glory hole sycophand bullying weirdos that you've brought in. That was not the people that they're going to make this worse.
It's like, OK, I'm bringing in Jeffrey Dahmer for my leadership course on ethics. I mean, come on, there's a lot you could do here. Unfortunately, I'm not sure. Kara, I mean, you always overestimate the gravity of a situation when you're in it.
I'm beginning to think he's like totally jump the shark here. Well, let's see Fonzie. Let's call him Fonzie from now on. But here's the thing.
I think he'll get carried by bankers and other Silicon Valley bros just like that. No, no one's going to say nothing. I think that's what's happening here is they will not tell him. They will not.
I don't live there anymore. He's not speaking to me now. Although he did ask me for suggestions four weeks ago. Like, would you would you help?
I'm like, sure, I love Twitter. But here's the thing where people don't realize. I mean, hello, it was be fine. Tesla could go down 80% from here.
If Matt is down 80%, you don't think Tesla can go down 80%. We don't know what he's levered against. He's just lost $30 billion. They'll lift him up.
They'll steal these people literally log roll in our time like you cannot believe. And part of it is good. Like, hey, you know what? I think they will stick with him.
I think they will stick with him. They are terrified. They'll stick with him. They'll stick with him.
And these are fake friends, Cara. If I fucked up, I generally believe if I fucked up, you would come to my aid. And this is the definition of a friend. A friend is.
Well, what did you do? OK, go ahead. Sorry. Sorry.
So we're not friends. No, but you know what I mean. I put my son in jail as you know. But go ahead.
I believe when you're killing it and when you're doing well, you don't need friends. When you need friends is when you fuck up. And the moment this guy, Tesla goes to 30 bucks a share, which it could, the moment it comes out, he's in real financial trouble, he's overextended. The moment it comes out, the Twitter is basically being seized by creditors.
A lot of those people you think are holding them up. They are the definition of fair weather friends. No, we'll see. And I just don't know.
They don't know. Every person, there is nobody in this world that is not subject and vulnerable to an enormous fall. And unless you realize that, you become more and more vulnerable to a fall. The key to maintaining excellence and being a good citizen is that one, realize how fortunate you are, and also realize that you are not immune from bad decisions and bad luck.
And this guy has decided that he got a vaccination against bad luck or anything bad happening to him. I have never seen someone more ripe for a fall. We always like to reverse-engineer this to advise the young people. Yeah.
You are never more vulnerable to making it really bad decision or having something go really wrong as you are after a big win. When you pick a stock and it triples, don't fall into the trap of believing that it's your talent and investment genius. Because what happens is you increase your risk appetite. And the thing about luck and good fortune across the universe is it's perfectly symmetrical.
There is as much bad luck as there is good luck. And if you've killed it for whatever reason at work or in relationships or financially, it means you've had some good luck. Now, these people don't think luck has anything to do with it. It has a lot sometimes most of its de-determining factor.
I agree. So when you've had some good luck, as evidenced by your financial, your relationships, you dial in, you bring in your horns. And this is the hard part. This is the hard part.
When you have a relationship that doesn't work out, when you have a business that fails, when you have investments that go bad, that is the time to do whatever is required, to look into the mirror and say, I value, I am very good at what I do, and I'm stepping right back up to the fucking plate. I'm going to tell you, not going to happen here. Well, hold on, I'm ranting. All right, my answer, finish.
I'm going to ask someone out on a date. I'm going to go and try and raise even more money for my next startup. I'm going to be more generous and more confident than I've ever been. You want to, if you can, just at the point where you think you're killing it and you're ingenious, that's when you pull in your horns, and you move to safer investments, and you become very grateful.
And when you get beaten in the fucking face, professionally, personally, financially, do whatever is required to dust off your pants and get up and think, okay, this means I'm due for a glance, a grand slam right now. And this guy, he's totally, my sense is he's totally blind to the reality of what's going on around him. I think that is being generous. I think he knows exactly what he's doing.
He knows he will be held aloft by all these people. I have seen it. What do you think the strategy is here? Why is he doing these things?
I don't, because it pleases him, because he feels like it, because he's angry. I don't know, his dad didn't hug him enough. You know, he has a lot of people, he has people around him. He gets rid of people who say no, or who disagree.
You know, I think this guy's a visionary. You know what I've said it over and over and over again. But anyone who disagrees with him, who is supportive of him, if you disagree with him, you're out, and that is the way it goes. And I think there's plenty of suckups in Silicon Valley.
They're the worst of tech. I can't even tell you over the years, so many suckups, and they make it so hard for any of these people to learn, because they never pay a price. They never for a second pay, any real price. That matters that other people do.
People pay that all the time. They don't live in the real world. They live in their cashmere planes, blah, blah, blah. And everyone says they're smart, because I just don't think they'll ever pay a price.
They're feet never touch the ground. So Cinder Pichai and Jeb Bezos for the last 10 years have been saying, thank God for that Mark Zuckerberg guy. And for the first time, Mark Zuckerberg's like, thank God for that Elon Musk guy. Who knew Mark Zuckerberg was so relatively speaking, thoughtful and measured?
Doesn't he look better than he's ever looked right now? He does, but any never, let me just say, I have had lots of these with Mark over his business, but he never behaved like this. He's been well raised by his parents. I'm sorry, he really has.
Oh, he never punched down like this. This is like, he never did. I mean, there's like inconsistencies big and small here. He says he wants us to be a free speech platform and said that he wants it to be a place where everyone, including those who offend me.
And then he blocks AOC. Yeah. None of this makes any sense. No, none of it makes sense.
We'll see where you're going next, but Scott, we need to move on to the next story. Let's talk about the L word layoffs. This week, a speaking of layoffs has been a bloodbath for tech. Lift cut 700 employees, strike cut 1,000, which is 14% of the workforce.
And let me just say, Patrick Collison, well, I have it hard, but you did a classy job of doing it. Open door, your favorite company, let you know if 550 people, that was a joke, it's not your favorite company. And the list goes on. It's expecting to announce massive layoffs as soon as Wednesday.
Numbers could be in the thousands, according to the Wall Street Journal. It's an opportunity for these people to do that. They did over hire when they could have, I see why they did. Is this an indicator that rate hikes are working to slow down inflation?
How long will it last? You're the one that called this the Patagonia Layoff. What do you think? What does it say?
Yeah, who would have thought it? We said six months ago, this was going to be the Patagonia Vest Recession. And it's at a very basic level. A growth company is, it's stock prices, a function of these future ambition cash flows, right?
Reverse engineered or discounted back. And when they're discounted back at 6% versus 2%, those future cash flows are worth most of less. And in order to invest in growth, they got to raise money, which becomes more expensive. So financing the company is more expensive to obtain future cash flows, which are worth less money.
And the fulcrum of that increased expense and decrease in value is the share price. Now, having said that, everyone's obsessed over Elon and his antics around laying off 3,750 people are half of Twitter's workforce. That is going to be, that is going to be, you know, brunch at La Conde Verde. It's going to be so nice compared to what's about to happen at meta.
Since the pandemic began, meta has hired 40,000 people. That's a lot. And if you look at very crudely speaking, what's happened in the economy around the growthy part, it's just regressed to where it was pre-pandemic. Viewership, stock prices, usage, spending has just kind of corrected back to where it was pre-pandemic, which means, which means that meta may, I'm even going to say likely, is not going to lay off 3,750 people.
It's going to lay off 37,000. Oh, that would be a lot. The interesting thing will be if they lay them off, the stocks going to go up. But if they lay them off in reality labs, the stock's going to skyrocket.
Yeah, people don't like that. Any indication that this guy is about to sober up from his Grande Vente, Iowaska, big golf trip around the metaverse, the market's going to go crazy. Because if he cuts a dollar in different parts of the company, he probably loses 30, 50, 70 cents a revenue because those people were doing something. If he cuts a dollar out of reality labs, he gets 99 cents flows to the bottom line.
So you're just seeing the beginning. It'll be interesting to see if he backs off. He probably shouldn't have spent a little amount. That was interesting to me.
They are? He's about the farm here. He's about the farm thing, which I sort of admire. Like, I'm going for this.
Because I can't, it's sort of interesting. Yeah, but generally speaking of the way you do it is, you test things. You put in place metrics and then you pour billions of gallons of gasoline when you see what's going on. Do you know how much testing of voice at Amazon?
Yeah, I'm just trying to think of who has done this Betha Farm kind of thing. Jobs certainly didn't. There was never a Betha Farm on anything. I don't think I had a very slow roll.
I'm trying to think of it. There's been a Betha Farm. I mean, keep in mind, Horizon World has about the same traffic right now as MySpace or half the traffic of MySpace. I mean, it's a total disaster.
It's a total disaster. But they are cutting. It's super easy. If you were to predict layoffs, it's super easy to have done this.
Just look at SGA growth since the pandemic grew, versus the pandemic hit and look at revenue growth. Generally, fine, there's a place like Open Door. I mean, so I just want to say CNBC plays a role here. When Keith or Bob went on CNBC and just started lying, this stocks off about 40% since then.
A company like Open Door can end up laying off everybody. That company could go out of business and the hospital really market. Yeah, the market's really melting down. The market's really melting down.
The market's laying down. That's what it'll do. It's buying. The market's beginning to smell a death rattle around Open Door.
Meta is an amazing company. It's a cash volcano. It will endure for at least a decade. What they're looking for there is one word.
They're looking for sanity. They're looking for an adult in the room. Yeah, stop with the miniver of stuff. So layoffs, FYI, I cite the tracks, Tech Start-Up Lails, says that 88 tech companies cut 12,000 workers in October, at least another 3,500 have been let go this month.
That doesn't include Twitter layoffs. I think it's also, again, a very good time to start a company. I think it's a really, this is when this is the Google's of the world came to Facebook. All these companies came to be in these times when people are just thrown out and had to live by their own wits.
Is there hope for these workers? I think there's new companies to be formed. I think you're going to have to take the risks that got you, where you got to in the first place. Yeah, I do think all you Twitter people, I bet there's all kinds of great ideas bubbling up.
I hope there are. Yeah, it's a function of expectations. And the problem with, it depends on who you are. And my friends who have the most difficult time, after layoffs or after retiring or whatever you want to call it, have what I call just the wrong amount of money.
And that is they have enough money where they don't have to do anything, but they don't have enough money where they can do nothing. And that is they have enough money, and they've had such an outstanding career to that point, where their bar is really high. And generally speaking, any opportunity you get is probably not going to be perfect. And what happens is time goes fast.
And you're out of work six months, you're out of work 12 months. And I'll tell you, when you're not training every day in the workplace, your muscle atrophy. The recession, if we're heading into one, is a fantastic time to start a company. There's clearly a new generation or a new wave of technology.
We don't even know what it is, but it's going to bubble up. It's a great time to find two or three talented people from that company, try and raise a little bit of money, cut your costs a little bit, rethink your life. Like, is this a good time to move, to be closer to our parents to a better quality of life? These are great moments to sort of say, what do I want to do, what you've got to do?
Is you got to do something? Don't say, oh, I'm just going to wait for the perfect thing. Because it usually doesn't roll around. Yep, I agree, but you know, it's not going to lay it off.
You and me, because Elon Musk is helping us. Keep at it. We're MSNBC in the midst of the Trump administration. We are, wah, sorry, Catherine Griffin, but we'll have you on, you can talk about it.
That's even better. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We'll come back, we'll unpack some big changes to cable news, and we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Matt Stoller about breaking up big companies. Hey, I'm AppiShel, comedian, writer, and floating head.
You may or may not have seen on your 4U page. And I'm starting a brand new podcast. Wait, wait, don't swipe away. It's called That Sounds Like A Lot, as in that feeling when you check your phone in the morning, you read three headlines and you immediately think, oh, that sounds like a lot.
But guess what? I can deal with it, and I'm gonna get into it every Friday. I'll break down whatever chaos is happening in the world, then I'll sit down with a comedian. You can be progressive and not be like fucking annoying.
Maybe an actor. They go coming to them and go too far. You go, why does the Sadie Hawkins dance happen? Maybe a filmmaker.
Since leaving that show, I'm challenged, sparing. I just got to hang out and try to do it. You're the one with the charm line. Could be a politician, basically anyone who responds to my cold de-ends.
We're recording the whole thing in a beautiful studio, so yes, you can watch it on YouTube, or you can listen wherever you get your podcast. This is not the place to get the news, but it is the place to feel a little better about it. That sounds like a lot, part of the Vox Media Podcast network. I'm Maria Sharapova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough.
Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Follow Pretty Tough wherever you get your podcasts. Scott, we're back.
Let's bring on our friend, Epivit. Matt Stoller is the director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project and the publisher of the Substack big, which focuses on the politics of monopoly and market power. Welcome, Matt Stoller. Thanks for having me.
So you're a very good tweeter, by the way. I don't know how long you're last there, but we'll see. How would you describe this moment in antitrust regulation? Because we just talked about layoffs.
These companies getting smaller, very big contraction in the tech space. Raining in big tech has been one of the biggest topics, but the big tech isn't is sort of little or tech. So they haven't passed anything. Leanicon has a rack up a big win.
So give me the landscape right now, especially with the recent declines. Yeah, so it's going to sound counterintuitive, but we are in one of the most extraordinary pivots in US economic history. It's certainly the biggest that we've ever seen in our lifetimes. And I can go into some details, but the policy is kind of like the tectonic plates of business behavior.
And it's not a coincidence that Facebook is falling apart at the same time as there has been regulatory scrutiny on the firms since 2018. And there are two antitrust suits against them. And there are reasons why Zuckerberg is having real trouble expanding. And that largely has to do with the fact that he can't engage in the same behavior that led him to build Facebook, which is monopolization.